Akatsuki High School
by cyndaquil510
Summary: All Sakura Haruno wanted to do was get through high school and be normal. All they wanted was for her to quietly join their gang and beat the shit out of everyone else. Rated M for swearing.
1. Chapter 1

Sakura Haruno was supposed to be normal. She was supposed to go to school every day, do her homework, and participate in her extracurriculars. She was completely and utterly normal – at least this was what she told herself. She was just an ordinary girl who made straight A's and had a few championships under her black belt (though she'd long since quit martial arts to focus on studying), and she'd been determined to stay that way. Ever since she'd moved and left her old school, Konoha High School, because of her dad's job, Sakura didn't want to cause any more trouble to her parents; she was on an especially tight leash with her parents because they were still stressed from their move to the middle of nowhere. She was studying at a tiny school now, which was rumored among students to be a delinquent school; when she'd left, Naruto had screamed something about her dying and drowning in evil.

Sakura knew she didn't belong in this school. Her candy pink hair gave her an image of innocence, and as Lee would put it, youthful energy. Not only would she stick out like a sore thumb, she'd also see fights every day. Sakura was fully aware of what happened in the school she transferred to, but she never counted on herself getting involved because she thought she had self control.

So when she _accidentally _stirred up trouble in school because of her dreadfully short fuse, there was a dread that crept through her heart and a prayer that passed her lips, begging that the principal didn't notice, but of course, he did.

Good Lord, it hadn't even been fifteen minutes since she stepped onto the school grounds, and a cheeky brat _had _to try to feel her up, and now she was going to be in trouble!

And that's how she ended up sitting on a barely-functional squeaky folding chair in a dilapidated office on the fourth floor of her new school with her feet planted properly on the floor and her hands placed square in the center of her lap with a bead of sweat trickling down the side of her cheek. Pins and needles shot through her right fist as she so _desperately_ clenched it.

_Bad fist,_ she scolded in her mind. She glared pointedly at her hand, recalling the way her fist connected with the cheek and the way the skin swelled as soon as the offender had fallen to the floor. It had been a rather refreshing feeling, but Sakura had been quick to quash it.

_Why do I always have to lose my temper?_

Guilt prodded her chest as she thought back to her childhood with Naruto. While she had beat him up a lot when they were kids, he wouldn't listen to anyone, and the only way to get him to listen was to give him a good whack across the head.

_I probably shouldn't have developed that habit, _Sakura thought with a roll of her eyes. Punching people was almost like second nature to her now, and the fact that she had thoroughly enjoyed beating up a punching bag in karate made it even more difficult. Sakura hated to admit it, but she did like the satisfying crunch sound her fist made when it met the punching bag during practice.

She sighed. _I shouldn't even be here._

How she wished to return to Konoha High School and be with her friends again. What she wouldn't give to play another shogi match with Shikamaru or do youthful Taibo exercises with Lee and Gai. She ached to move back to her old house and gossip with Ino or go to karate practice with Naruto one more time. She wanted to be anywhere else but the room she was in, and she really, desperately wanted to change out of her shirt that was soaked with sweat.

"Sakura Haruno." A deep, gruff voice boomed from the dark figure before her thin form and jarred her from her thoughts. The voice echoed off cold graffitied walls and sent a shiver up Sakura's stiff spine.

She flinched. After all, this was the first time she'd ever been sent to the principal's office for discipline; she'd always been a well-mannered student who respected her teachers and fellow peers. Her fingers twisted nervously in her uniform's skirt, and her palms were slick. Sakura Haruno was rarely intimidated, but today, her squeaky clean record at her new high school was tarnished. The girl was praying that she'd get off with a warning and be able to salvage a good relationship with her principal, knowing she'd need it, especially at a school like this.

She wetted her chapped lips as she glanced up at the back of the leathery chair that faced her. Judging from the sound of his voice, the principal was rather young. Perhaps he'd be understanding. When the chair creaked, her head snapped up, fully intent on giving her principal her undivided attention. But when a metallic gleam caught her eye, she knew something was wrong.

This was not the principal.

At least, it wasn't the principal she had been expecting; Sakura had been expecting a buff, middle-aged man with a bald spot on his head to face her, the kind of old man with a scar or two because of the daily quarrels he'd get into with his students. He'd wear a rumpled suit from nights of stress spent talking to parents. Maybe he'd also have a tiny tattoo, but she certainly hadn't been expecting… this.

This person was worse than she imagined. The man sitting in the chair looked to be just a few years older than she, and if his bright, orange hair wasn't enough of a warning sign, then maybe the piercings covering his face were. And he didn't just have one or two – he had _several_. Sakura shivered at the thought of getting the piercings, especially the ones through the nose bridge. She let her eyes run over his form discreetly, and she raised an eyebrow at his choice of conservative clothing, which heavily contrasted his liberal use of metal on his face. His clothes were neatly ironed and pressed, and everything he wore was black. Stretching up his neck, the collar obscured the bottom third of his face. The black was intimidating; paired with the metal on his face, Pein looked like a gangster. The worst part? His eyes.

They seemed to see straight into her soul, and the confidence and pride they possessed challenged her own. They gave him an untouchable feeling. Sakura's blood froze in her veins, a sinking feeling arising in her chest. Her instinct was telling her this man was dangerous. There was an unmistakable glint of steel in his purple orbs that frightened her and shook her down to her very core. Her eyes widened and her fingers trembled with fear. The tension in the room had escalated, and her heart felt like it was being crushed. She could scarcely breathe under his watchful gaze.

"Haruno." His heavy voice echoed once more through the room. Resting his chin on a palm, he waited for her eyes to refocus.

Slowly, she licked her lips and tried to moisten her dry mouth, forcing herself to say his name. "P-Principal Pein?" The twinge of uncertainty in her voice did not escape him, though.

_Damn his aura,_ Sakura cursed in her mind. Despite her attempts, her hands wouldn't stop shaking.

_This man… _Her upper lip curled slightly as she steeled her will to sit straight.

"Call me Pein." This tiny gesture of friendliness caught her off guard, leaving her unsure of how to react.

"Uh…" Sakura's mouth gaped open like a fish's out of water. There was no way this was her principal. He simply couldn't be! He certainly didn't act like one, much less look like one. His hair color didn't do much to give him an air of business, and neither did his piercings. But maybe, despite his appearance, he would be like any regular principal, though that hope was dying with every second.

"Welcome to Ame High School." His dead, monotone voice would've put Sakura in a hysterical laughing fit out of self-pity, but his menacing and cold stare was enough to suppress and stomp out laughter. "I believe we haven't met before."

And indeed, they hadn't. Her enrollment had been a rather simple procedure; she'd simply mailed in her academic information and received a parcel containing her uniform, a simple white shirt and a black skirt. It had been a relatively informal process, but it hadn't worried her parents in the least.

"_It's because we're in a different town," _Her mother had said cheerfully. "_I'm sure that your school will be fine! Now go help your father unpack those boxes._"

And when she'd confronted her father, he'd been no different. "_School? Just study hard and don't worry about what other people think. I know this is a new place, honey, but you don't need to be anxious. I'm sure it's not as bad as you're saying it is._"

Pein's empty gaze pierced through her heart, and Sakura swore that the temperature of the room dropped to subzero temperatures. She shuddered. His countenance suggested that she wasn't getting out alive, so she braced herself and lowered her head, allowing her locks topartially cover her face – anything to avoid those eyes of his.

"I have been informed that you expressed aggression to another student." His voice held neither anger nor disappointment. Rather, he said it objectively. There was even a tinge of amusement and praise.

Sakura's eyes snapped open, and she blinked several times before replying. "Sir?" She was getting confused to say the least, and the fear she held in her heart was slowly disintegrating. She had physically injured another student, so why was she not getting roasted yet? She bit her lip, as she'd been expecting a bit more anger. Then again, she wasn't at a regular high school; Ame High School was infamous for a reason, and the principal himself could be the poster boy going by appearance alone.

Maybe she'd heard wrong, but the look on Pein's face told her otherwise. He had most definitely implied that he was happy with her.

No, she was definitely not afraid anymore. She was full on confused. Her hands still shook at her sides, for she was beginning to theorize that this person was anything but normal in appearance and personality.

Maybe Pein liked fights, but couldn't show it because of his position. Or maybe, he was amused to see a tiny pink haired girl destroy a student twice her size. Several ideas zipped through her mind. The possibilities were endless (ok maybe not endless, but there were quite a few), and Sakura estimated it was most likely the second reason that she'd thought of – that it was absurd a tiny girl like her could pack such a punch – mostly because that was why everyone else back at home laughed. Furthermore, this man was the principal of a school of thugs. It wasn't every day that he saw someone like her whale on a bigger dude. Yes, that as it. Worst case scenario was that this man was going to tell her to fight more and possibly put her in a ring.

The man before her showed the barest hints of a smirk. He gazed at her intently, and Sakura's breath hitched under the pressure of his gaze.

Twisting his lips into an approving, smile Pein leaned back into his chair. "Someone told me that you used a right hook. It was a good choice." Sakura's eyes bugged out of her head, and she leaned forward, her fingers no longer wrapped in fabric.

_This can't be right. _Her prediction had been wrong.

Whereas Pein hinted at his approval earlier, he'd just outright confirmed one of the worst of her suspicions.

"Excuse me?" Her voice was incredulous, and her nervousness disappeared; this was completely ridiculous. What kind of a teacher or principal praised violence? Was this all a joke? Sakura let out an exasperated giggle. "I punched a student," she said bluntly.

"And?" The principal lifted an eyebrow and tilted his head.

"I _punched _a student! Are you not listening to me?" She shot to her feet and slammed her hands on his desk, her mind in a whirl. It was probably not the right choice of action, but she was seriously confused. The various tabletop accessories rattled at the impact. "I _physically assaulted _another student. Why aren't you punishing me? Why am I not in detention yet?" Sakura rested her hands on her hips, her eyes narrowing, but the principal leveled with her gaze.

She was going insane; here she was, getting praised for her incredible right hook, and she was trying to get herself into trouble. She knew he was saying that she wouldn't receive any negative consequences, but it just didn't make any sense! In a way, Sakura was still clinging onto the hope that this man had some sort of sense in him, even though she knew she was being naïve.

"It was a good choice," Pein mused, completely nonplussed. "You even put him in the school clinic." He tapped on a cell phone that lay on his table. The screen flickered to life, and he typed in his passcode.

Sakura, in her shock, stayed silent, observing his every movement. His calloused fingers tapped on the messages icon. He selected a picture that had been sent to him and enlarged it. Promptly, he slid the phone across the wooden desk and pointed at the screen.

There was no doubt about it; despite the two minute encounter, Sakura could still recognize the face. The person in the picture had been the student who'd tried to grope her today, but it'd been difficult to tell at first. After all, she had to squint past the bruises and welts that had arisen on his face. She could still see the imprint of her fist on the poor kid's face.

"That's not the point," she sighed, rubbing her forehead. She clearly wasn't getting through. "Why am I not being disciplined? Hitting people isn't allowed in schools!" She pressed even further. "Also, aren't you the Principal?"

_Even the principal of a delinquent school who looks like a delinquent has to follow _some _sort of protocol, _she thought.

How else would he have become the principal anyway, especially when there was a School Board that negotiated with established schools?

"You've done nothing wrong," he shrugged. Pein casually reached under his desk, and to Sakura's disbelief, he produced and cracked open a beer. "Your point is?" He stoically downed the drink.

He wasn't getting it. Just her luck; not only was her principal a delinquent, he was also incredibly dense.

Sakura's eyes narrowed even more. "Why are you ok with fights? Shouldn't you be trying to stop them?"

The orange haired man sighed and set his beer down before he rummaged through his desk, cursing under his breath when the sleeve of his jacket caught onto the edge of the drawer. He quickly produced a sheet of paper and handed it to her, pointing at a highlighted line. Once Sakura received the paper, he leaned back and silently finished the beer.

_It feels like they forgot this in package that came with my stuff. _Brushing that thought aside, she began to read.

Sakura skimmed the lines printed across the page despite the yellow highlighted portion that screamed at her from the bottom. She lifted an eyebrow at what she'd read.

_Welcome to Ame High School,_ it said almost too cheerily_, where only the best of the best survive here _(Sakura snorted quietly at this)_. You will have 7 classes a day, _blah blah blah, _We are not responsible for injuries or maiming, _blah blah blah, _The principal will determine which class you belong to, _and finally, Sakura's eyes rested upon the highlighted words, and she was instantly taken aback. Her head snapped up as soon as she registered the text she'd just processed.

"What is this?" She hissed, jabbing a finger at the highlighted portion. "My class is determined by my win to loss ratio? Are you kidding me?"

_This is too much,_ Sakura thought, exasperated. _No fucking way. _This school was crazy, and she had to get out as soon as possible. Even if she had to skip the rest of the goddamn day, she was going to get home as soon as possible and tell her parents they had to move the fuck back to the place from whence they came.

"This is a sick joke," she breathed. _A sick, sick joke._

"This is not a joke. I've read your records," Pein stated. "You used to be in karate." He glanced down at the sheet in his hands. "You won quite a few championships."

She blanched. "What? I never sent in my-"

"We have our ways," Pein said swiftly without losing a beat. "It's a good thing you ended up coming here; you needed to be assigned to a class anyway." He paused for a moment. "You'll be in Class A." An orange eyebrow rose. "And don't try to leave." He let the threat hang in the air. His eyes bore into hers.

_You'll regret it,_ they warned.

A frigid breeze swept through the room and his gaze scraped over her spine like a knife, and for a moment, Sakura forgot how to breathe. Her lungs ceased to function for a second and her eyes widened. She tried to protest, but her lips were glued shut. She was utterly and completely caught in his gaze, her bravado but a dying candle flame.

But it was all for a moment.

_Fight it_, she demanded in her mind. _Fight it right now. He won't get you again._

She took quick, shallow breaths, which became fuller and more regulated. The tiny parasite of fear that had eaten through her chest was slowly crushed to dust, though Sakura remained relatively immobile. It was clear though, that Pein knew the effect he had on her and that she was pushing it back - even winning. The corner of his lips turned upwards ever so slightly.

"You are dismissed." He nodded, and then proceeded to turn his swivel chair back around, leaving Sakura to stand there in silence. The moment Pein turned around, her heart unclenched, and she gasped. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead, and her fingers flexed to dispel her paralysis. The Ame High School info sheet that she'd been holding slipped out of her grasp and fluttered gently to the cold ground.

_With just his eyes,_ Sakura thought, furrowing a brow. She needed to be careful. At least now, she was building some mental resistance to his oppressive presence. But she couldn't help but feel followed and exposed when Pein had told her he knew things about her – information that she'd never released to the school. Anger began to bubble in her chest, rising straight to her brain.

_We have our ways, _she mocked in her mind. _What the hell!? _Sakura clenched her fist and glared at the leather chair before her, focusing on the tuft of orange hair that peeked out from behind the chair. _Damn him_, she screamed in his mind.

But another part of her was laughing. _Hey, at least you didn't get into trouble. Just keep it low key from now on and you'll be fine. _The voice paused for a moment before continuing. _But at least you can beat up as many people as you want here._

_Shut up, _she thought to herself. _That's not it._

She was no longer the little girl she'd once been, who beat up Naruto whenever he said something idiotic – no longer impulsive and relying completely on her emotions. But if this was the director, then what were the students like? At this point, having little trouble seemed ideal. She didn't want to deal with more freaks like Pein. Much less did she want to become a thug.

The pink haired girl sighed, knowing that staying inconspicuous was her best choice of action - being invisible even better, but she knew it was virtually impossible, at least not with her bubblegum pink hair. Being in Class A couldn't be any good. After all, at this school, Sakura knew she had to change her way of thinking; the letter A would no longer be the same. Maybe if she stayed as nonviolent as possible, Pein would move her down to a more, what she hoped to be, normal class.

There was nothing she could do but leave the office. She'd had enough surprises for a day, so she turned on her heel and walked/stomped to the door, shoving it with a bit more force than necessary. The already broken door creaked under her push and gave way.

But she couldn't leave. She faced a wall of darkness. "Ooph!" Sakura collided with a hard surface and fell back onto her butt. Her tailbone cried out in pain at the impact, sending tears to her eyes.

_Today is not a good day, _Sakura confirmed in her mind.

Feeling rather pissed, she looked up, only to find her face a mere two inches away from an orange surface. "What the-"She scrambled backwards to see a man wearing an orange mask with a lollipop-like swirl on it. Ok, this school was _definitely _not normal.

_It's like this school is _trying _to prove a point, _she griped silently. She offered a weak smile to the boy stooped over her, but inside, her heart was beating out of her chest. She wanted to snap this person's neck.

"Ooh! Are you the new student? What's your name? My name is Tobi! Nice to meet you!" In a flash, his hand shot out and snatched her hand. He shook it vigorously, but Sakura was not in the mood to deal with a child in a grown up's body.

"Stop it," she hissed. She pulled her hand back and cradled it against her chest protectively. Somewhere deep inside the expanse of her mind, Sakura knew this person was dangerous. He certainly didn't look the part, but she could feel it deep in her bones. There was something rather off-putting about him and an instinctual fear was screaming at her to get away. But where could she run? It wasn't like Pein was going to help her. She watched him warily, but her feet and rear stayed planted to the ground, unwilling to move.

Amidst Sakura's inner turmoil, Tobi's carefree demeanor seemed to shift, his excitement having all but evaporated into thin air. His grip on her hand had left it red and stinging, and the way he hovered over her cut off any escape routes. In other words, this guy knew what he was doing. She grit her teeth as the strange masked man approached her, and she realized that this person was _much _taller than she previously had thought.

Kakashi, her Karate instructor, had once given her advice and Sakura just _had _to remember it at the worst possible time.

"_Don't underestimate anyone," _he'd warned while flipping through his porn. "_Do that, and it will be your downfall. In a fight, looks don't matter – only the abilities of your opponents do._"

Sakura's eyes widened considerably and adrenaline coursed through her veins. She was a cornered animal, and she could see nothing but her death in the bright orange mask. Tobi's aura was dark – so dark it felt even more oppressive and deadly than Pein's. It felt like she was staring at Death in the face. Her breathing quickened and her chest heaved. His presence was crushing her very soul, and suddenly, his mask didn't seem so silly.

_This is it, _she thought bitterly. Her legs were nothing but limp noodles, and her hands were now glued to the floor. Sakura's mind was numb and she could no longer feel the pain exuding from her tailbone, and was the last thing she cared about. She was completely and utterly paralyzed. She didn't even have the strength to lift a finger or regain mental control. It felt like Tobi was sucking away all her strength and will with his presence alone. All he had to do was run a knife through her. She just sat there as Tobi inched closer.

With difficulty, Sakura grit her teeth, trying to brace herself, waiting for a response to her rude knee-jerk reaction.

But it never came. Sakura cracked open an eye and saw only his head of spiky hair.

"34B, huh?" Tobi leaned in and tilted his head sideways once he got close to her chest. He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Appearances can be deceiving." The disappointment was clear in his voice, and the angry aura he had been exuding was replaced with one of childlike exuberance.

_You're disappointed?_ Her overwhelming anger washed over any fear that she had out of her mind; all she could see was red as her instincts sprang into action. A high strung wire that had been tightening in her chest ever since puberty snapped, and she quickly jumped to her feet, sending a fully-powered axe kick straight towards Tobi's head.

She was seriously going to kill the bastard and mangle his dead body.

"I'm sorry I'm underdeveloped," she growled as the kick flew downwards.

"Eh?" Tobi had not enough time to react before the axe kick connected and smashed into his mask, shattering it into pieces. "Ah!" He quickly covered his face with his hands before the shards fell from his face and ran out the room bawling like a baby. "The new girl is mean! Wah! Help me, Deidara! My nose is bleeding! AH!"

His voice eventually faded to an echo as he disappeared around a corner off in the distance, and Sakura was happy that she remembered to wear shorts under her skirt.

"Bastard," Sakura whispered, letting her foot fall to the ground. The kid deserved it. Her chest size had always been a sensitive topic for her. She knew that her chest wasn't big as Ino's, but it was still something! It wasn't her fault she wasn't well endowed, and not everyone had to express such disappointment! After having been surrounded by busty females like Konoha's principal, Tsunade, and her best friend Ino, Sakura had become self-conscious, and Sai hadn't been one to keep quiet about his thoughts on her breasts.

_I also need to control my emotions. _

_No you don't. _Another part of her smirked. _Don't try to hide who you really are._

"Hmph." Sakura stomped out the door. "Class A, was it?" She looked left and right, unsure of where to go, and she wasn't sure that she even wanted to go. Hooligans lined the hallways and the smell of smoke drifted to her nose. Several had bats or wooden planks in their hands, and they carried them with ease and nonchalance, like the weapons were a part of their bodies.

"Haruno." The deep voice called from inside the Principal's Office, and Sakura turned around slowly.

The one thing on her mind?

_Shit._

She had completely forgotten that Pein was still there and she nervously glanced at him, dread apparent on her face.

Pein turned around and only smirked as he reached into a drawer and made a deliberate mark on a paper, no doubt her application.

"Congratulations. You've just been moved to Class S." He twirled a pencil in his hand, and it quickly became a blur of yellow. "Lucky you. It's the best class we have."

Sakura paled. "Class S?" At that moment, she knew she'd just dug herself a deeper hole. Class S… Naruto had once introduced her to Shounen manga, and often, class S was the highest class, and often the worst. Funny how this school was organized like a manga, but there was no way she was going to go to that class.

_Shit._

"Can I just stay in Class A?"

_Or even go to a lower class…_

Pein shook his head. His lips were pressed into a thin, firm line. There was no escaping her fate, and it was clear in his stony expression.

Panic swelled throughout her chest. One kick! It'd been only one teensy-weensy kick, and now she was condemned to Class S. She could hardly even imagine what kind of lunatics were going to be her classmates; Class S? They'd probably have gone to jail a couple of times and killed a few people. But it couldn't be that bad; this was a high school, Sakura reasoned. How many people could a high schooler kill anyway? Knowing that she was going to be put in a class with the biggest and baddest of the delinquents made Sakura uneasy.

A cold iron rod poked at her chest.

She had sworn to Tsunade and Kakashi that she'd only fight inside a proper dojo. But she didn't want to fight. She simply couldn't.

_That drop kick just now was a fluke,_ she told herself. _I shouldn't have done that._

_Don't be a wuss,_ another voice inside her taunted. _Get in there and kick some ass! You're strong and you know it, even if you are a year out of practice._

_Shut up, shut up! I don't want to fight,_ she chanted in her mind.

Sakura had been in deep thought, thinking about how she would approach the classroom with the worst of the worst, and the worry was clear on her face. Her eyes were now a dull green and a crease had appeared between her eyebrows.

"Haruno."

She lifted her head, hiding her anxiety with a deceptively calm posture.

"Get to class." Pein clasped his hands together. It was obvious he wasn't going to change his mind. "Top floor. Take the stairs at the end of the hallway on your right." His laconic speech was a good change from her messy thoughts.

Turning around on her heel, Sakura took a deep breath and stepped out of the office. She was careful to shut the door behind her without using more strength than necessary. She didn't take her time though, moving quickly to spend less time in a hall of bloodthirsty delinquents.

This was it. The hall stretched on for eternity before her, each side flanked by several gangster-looking men. There were a few girls here and there, but they looked equally vicious, and with Sakura's luck, the stairway happened to be at the end of the hall.

_Here goes nothing._

Briskly, she set out for the stairs, ignoring any stares or catcalls. To her, the people in the halls were nonexistent. She refused to associate with any more people today; she'd only met two of the people at this school, and she was already overwhelmed.

"Hey kid! Go back to Candyland," a nearby thug taunted.

"Why are you heading for those stairs, bubble-gum head? You wanna die?"

"Don't ya think yer in the wrong school, girly?"

Sakura pretended she didn't hear the insults tossed at her pink hair, instead clenching her fist. She swore that she was going to punch something the minute school let out. Her hair had also been the subject of several teasings. It'd given her more trouble than she ever wanted, especially when middle school rolled around. Teachers had asked her several times to dye her hair back to black, claiming that pink was definitely not a natural hair color, causing Sakura to have to spend an entire afternoon in the nurse's office under the inspection of several female teachers. Moreover, people always called her a kid, and she knew she most certainly was not a child.

_Don't get angry, don't get angry…WHY IS THIS HALLWAY SO LONG!? _Sakura felt like her head was literally going to explode, emphasis on the literally. There was only so much she could take, and she wanted to crush the delinquents like the ants they were.

Her pace had quickened to a power walk, and her dark aura reduced loud chattering to hushed whispers. Sweeping past cracked windows and crudely painted walls, she was quick to rush up the stairs. With freedom in view, Sakura's steps escalated from a power walk to a jog, and she nearly flew up the stairs, letting everyone behind her eat her dust.

Though the jog hadn't winded her, Sakura still caught her breath once she reached the top of the stairs.

Her eyes traced from the skyscraper-high ceiling to the polished floorboards. It was nothing like the level below her; there wasn't even a speck of dirt to be seen. But never mind the nonexistent dirt, this hall was the fanciest thing she'd ever seen. The windows lining the wall were draped with heavy, black curtains, and the wall was lined with blood red couches. A plasma screen TV, the latest model, no doubt, was situated across from the couches. The lights were relatively dim, causing Sakura to squint a bit a wonder why the atmosphere was so secretive. The floors were carpeted with a heavy black rug, and in the middle of it was a single, red cloud lined with silver.

Sakura's eyes widened considerably. She recognized this symbol. She'd seen it several times throughout the town while moving into her new home about a week ago. It was painted neatly on telephone poles, buildings, pipes, you name it. But why was it here of all places? Her best guess was that the cloud was this school's mascot, leaving her snickering quietly when she thought of the red cloud manifested as a costume at a game. Silly mascot/costume aside, the single red cloud was still a beautiful design despite its simplicity.

But a small part of Sakura took a tentative breath of relief. Even though being part of "Class S" was still an uncertain idea, perhaps it was also where all the really _smart, _but strong delinquents were. Well, she hoped they were smart because the TV was tuned in to the news – that at least these delinquents had the decency to learn about a world more than violence. She took a breath as she glanced at the one sliding door that existed, the barrier that existed between her and her (hopefully normal) classmates.

Sakura was praying that no one would want to fight her on the first day, or the next day, or the next day, and all the way up until the very last day of school. In her mind, she had signed an oath in blood when Kakashi and Tsunade requested that she only fight in a proper dojo with proper surveillance.

Biting her lip nervously, she also wondered if she should reconsider her plan of existing here.

If she went in all meek and quiet, no doubt people would pick on her; she'd be suffering every day. The pink haired student knew that the chances of being left alone were dwindling very quickly. Her hair color would attract everyone, and the principal would do nothing about it; at most he would encourage her to fight even more!

But what if she did break her promise to Tsunade and Kakashi? She could go in, bank on being the strongest person in this school, and defeat everyone, but that wasn't a good choice either. She might be able to dominate everyone, but in the end she'd have to deal with challenges from other students. Furthermore, Sakura had a horrible feeling that Tobi was in Class S, and defeating everyone didn't seem so feasible anymore.

And if she lost, Sakura knew that she would lose face and credibility. Even if she moved to a lower class, which was what she wanted, there was pride that burned brightly in her soul; she didn't want to show weakness just as much as she didn't want to fight.

Sakura swallowed.

None of her options were very good, and she certainly didn't want to involve herself with any of her classmates more than she had to, no matter how smart they were; if they had any brains, they wouldn't devote their time to petty crimes.

She knew she was putting all her faith in her promise to her mentors to keep her afloat. She wished that Naruto was beside her for comfort, knowing she desperately wanted advice from a friend she'd known since pre-school.

_If Naruto were here…_ Sakura would certainly complain about all of the reservations she had about this school and how she'd nearly died within the span of a short visit to the questionable Principal's Office.

_Jeez, I only wanted a quiet sophomore year._ She wandered around a bit in the luxuriously decorated hallway, running a finger over the velvet curtains and the suede couches. These weren't any ordinary couches. From just one touch, Sakura could tell this was the expensive stuff, and she dreaded to think of where they got it from.

Sakura drifted to the window and pulled back a curtain, gazing down on the trashed school grounds and the town beyond. The sky was streaked with heavy clouds; birds flew close to the ground. The entire town was painted a dark shade of gray, and the smog from the factories on the horizon only helped to accentuate the bland, depressing nature of the place that she'd moved to, which happened to be in the middle of nowhere.

"They call it Ame for a reason," Sakura mumbled. But she knew she couldn't postpone going to class any longer. Pein was probably watching her closely through a security camera while sharpening a knife and Sakura was too young to die. She also knew that sooner or later she'd have to meet her new classmates and their assorted … personalities. She could hardly guess what they'd be like; even the most violent people who she thought were quite similar, she found, had unique personalities.

_There's only one way to find out,_ the pink haired student muttered in her mind. Sakura strode towards the door and put a firm hand on the handle, and without thinking any further, eased the door open.


	2. Chapter 2

There was one thing Sakura had been anticipating when she opened the door - a surprise attack. She was half expecting an arrow (or something of the like) to come flying at her face; she'd dug the heel of her shoe deeper into the ground with each passing second, hoping that nothing popped out at her. When the door stood completely ajar, she'd squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself, ready for something to happen. But she what she met was deafening silence. Sakura tentatively opened an eye. The room was completely and utterly empty. She shut the door behind her.

_Now don't you feel silly_, the voice inside her head laughed. _Would you look at that? No one's even here._

Sakura whirled around and swung her fist at the door, easily smashing a hole into it. Wooden splinters clattered to the floor as she seethed. She'd been a complete fool, worrying about survival in the class and her faith in her promise to her mentors, but there wasn't even anyone there. She'd been a fool to shut her eyes and allow Pein and Tobi to scare her. Sakura turned her head to the side and spotted a lonely chair. With one final fit of anger, she punted into the air and smirked as it fell into a disgraceful heap a few feet away. However, the moment the chair had landed onto the ground, a faint click sounded from the high ceiling, and a few small spheres crashed to the floor.

Curious, Sakura approached the spheres. They appeared to be rather harmless. "What-"

_BOOM!_

Yellows, oranges, blues, and reds exploded in her face before she could react, and the moment she caught a whiff of the smoke, she knew she was in trouble.

_Bad idea! Abort, abort! Stink bomb!_

But it was too late. An awful stench of old socks scraped along the insides of a dirty toilet and dog farts filled Sakura's nose as she frantically tried to respire. She gagged and flailed, fanning away the smoke with a hand that she had begrudgingly decided to spare.

_Oh god, it's worse than Akamaru's…_

Her face changed between several different shades, ranging from blue to green. She didn't want one more stink particle passing through her nose, but she didn't want to die either; holding her breath for more than a 30 seconds was edging towards her limits.

_Breathe through your mouth_, a desperate voice within her suggested.

She tried just that.

"Blurgh! It tastes even worse than it smells!" she choked out. Sakura scraped at her tongue, her eyes watering with disgust, realizing it stank so bad it had a taste. She was completely surrounded by the god awful smell, and she had a feeling she'd be smelling/tasting it for weeks. Whoever came up with that concoction had to be either a genius or a nutjob, or maybe even both. Whatever the case, the list of the names of people she was going to seriously injure increased by one.

Sakura braved the stink, waiting for the thick smoke to dissipate. While the haze of colors faded away, the malodor stubbornly clung to her clothes.

The room was silent, save for the squeaks her shoes made as she scooted across the floor. Glancing around the room, Sakura could tell what the people in this class devoted most of their time to. If the punching bag in the corner didn't give it away, then maybe the assorted weapons hanging on the far end of the wall did. Her eyes skimmed over a collection of bats, knives, swords, and bows. Metal arms glinted maliciously under the lights, and even the wooden kinds didn't seem so friendly - she quickly decided to appreciate the weapons from a distance, hoping that none of them were rigged to slice her face in half if she got too close. Sakura knew not what to expect, so she judged it was best to be as paranoid as possible; the smoke bombs probably weren't going to be the only things that were going to come flying out.

Apparently, though, she wasn't being paranoid enough; the room was completely riddled with traps.

She hadn't even moved a few feet when the floor beneath her decided to split open, threatening to swallow her whole into a pipe that lead to who-knows-where. Sakura quickly skirted out of the way, only to find herself sidestepping onslaughts of shuriken that crashed through the ceiling tiles. Hordes of the star-shaped blades embedded themselves in the wood. She yelped as senbon sprouted from the ground between her feet, paling immediately as she understood her situation: she was walking through a minefield of traps.

Who were these people anyway? Ninjas? Wherever she placed her feet, she felt a mini heart attack. If more stink bombs weren't falling from the ceiling, then arrows were blasting her way from the other side of the room.

She stopped, panting at the sudden dose of exercise. "I really need to work on my cardio," she grimaced, resting her hands on her knees for support. It'd been far too long since she last went to the gym or even exerted herself; she'd spent the entirety of the year studying at home, much to Kakashi's and Naruto's disappointment. Sakura's lungs and thighs were burning. "Kill me now," she wheezed. Her vision remained pinned on the floor beneath her in an attempt to stop the room from spinning.

But she noticed something was wrong. Her shadow was huge, and it was only getting bigger. Sakura's eyes widened in shock as her head snapped up to see a giant hand plummeting towards her spot on the ground. She stood, frozen, her jaw dropping to the floor.

At the last possible moment, she rolled out of the way, letting the palm smack into the floor and crush the floorboards with its sheer weight.

Sakura clutched at her heart, trying to regulate her breathing and calm her heart.

_The hell was that!?_

Running a shaky finger over the enormous hand, she realized it was molded from pure concrete and had busted up the floor. More importantly though, Sakura cringed at the thought of being smashed into a flat pancake.

_Day 1 at Ame High School,_ she thought bitterly. _I've almost died 147 times, and my principal is a psycho. I've also destroyed half of my classroom within the span of a few minutes. Please… just let me go home and take a nap… and never come back again._

Sakura lowered herself to the floor and laid down, sprawled beside the hand of death, shutting her eyes, content with the darkness. The ringing in her head quieted. Her head didn't feel quite so woozy, either. All in all, the floor was a nice place to take that nap she wanted.

"Maybe if I just closed my eyes, I'll wake up back at home in my ugly horse pajamas that mom and dad got me for Christmas. Or maybe I'll wake up in Ino's house."

_Click!_

Reality had just had to give her a backhand.

She groaned. Wearily, Sakura peeled her eyes open just in time to see a small, rectangular object close in on her face.

"Really?" she sighed, exasperated. She didn't even bother to move. She let her body become one with the cold, wooden floor as she watched the object grow in size.

_Doink!_

She simply laid there after the powder-covered chalkboard eraser anticlimactically bounced off her face and created a cloud of dust that settled on her cheeks and forehead. It was as if the room was actively trying to rub salt on the wound.

Thinking back to the first day she'd met Kakashi, Sakura had to laugh a little. She, Naruto, and Sasuke (mostly Naruto) had rigged the door with an eraser freshly coated with chalk dust, and Kakashi had fallen for it. Of course, he didn't let them go unpunished; they had to run laps around the neighborhood and organize his porn collection (Sakura, unfortunately, had the extra task of making sure Naruto didn't flip through any of it, but she had failed). She shuddered as she recalled the image that had spoiled her innocent eyes. Who knew Kakashi had an obsession with bondage?

Even as the images of scantily clad women drenched in oil flashed through her mind, a bitter smile had to grace Sakura's lips. She missed her old school and the old dojo, but most of all, she missed her friends and classmates. Ever since she'd moved to Ame, she couldn't stop thinking about her friends. They'd never be able to visit her. Konoha was too far; a trip to Ame (if they could even find the damned place on a map) would take at least two day's worth of driving. They wouldn't be able to text her either because as Sakura had discovered, service was awful with the constantly rainy weather.

Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. A lump formed in her throat.

_I can't keep doing this… wallowing in my nostalgia._

She wiped away the chalk, sweat, and tears on her face with her sleeve, glad that no one was there to see her moment of weakness. She knew her loyalty to her friends had always been her Achilles' Heel, and she also knew it was time to move on; Naruto wasn't here, and neither was Ino nor TenTen. They, as well as many others, had always been there for her, helping her along and cheering her on, but she was on her own for once - she had to get used to solitude. She had to learn to trust her own judgment, even if it meant going against what she'd been taught. She was, after all, no longer in Konoha, where everything was clean cut and clear. She was now at Ame High School, where everything was confusing, and the principal had enough piercings to last him a lifetime.

_Can I do it, though?_ She bit her lip.

Sakura's heart clenched tightly. She'd always been the kind of person to seek shelter in friends, but her sentimentality towards them was holding her back. She was beginning to realize that she'd never adjust if she kept thinking about what had been, what could've been; Sakura was going to have to push them aside, else she would be mentally weak forever. Her physical strength would mean nothing if she couldn't even trust herself to remain strong. She had to focus on the "now."

_What about your promise?_ The voice in her mind was grave and solemn. _Do you think you can keep it?_

"I don't know," she whispered, clenching her hands into fists. "And I don't want to think about it anymore."

Sakura took a shaky breath, slamming her fist into the ground and forcing herself to sit up, reassessing her surroundings. She was stuck in the middle of an oversized classroom with booby traps, ready for her on a moment's notice. Her first priority: she had to escape. She scanned the area around her to find something that could help her. The walls were bare and coated with a clean layer of white paint, highlighting the black, brown, and grey weapons hanging on it. The windows were rather large, and the glass appeared to be rather thick. The way that lead directly to the door seemed plausible, but the almost silent buzzing noises in the floor and ceiling suggested that the traps were being reloaded; it seemed that there was no good way to leave the room. However, she also had the displeasure of seeing a big, red button that she hadn't noticed before on the wall that read, "Trap Deactivation Switch."

Her eye twitched violently as she understood that there was a way to turn off the traps instead of stumbling around and activating every single one. She glared with distaste at the eraser that had gotten in an easy hit on her and reached down to retrieve a shuriken that had tried to bite her flesh earlier. With deadly precision, Sakura planted the weapon in the eraser with one, firm throw.

Silently, she cursed her horrible luck that managed to land her in Class S, and she wished to go bananas and vent her frustration on the punching bag she'd seen, maybe even tear it in half, but she knew better than to rashly move around (she wasn't completely opposed to the idea that she might accidentally step on an activated switch and explode in the process). But it wasn't just the prospect of traps - Sakura couldn't quite put her finger on it, but the atmosphere had suddenly become unusually tense - the air unnaturally still.

There was no doubt about it. She was being watched.

The first order of business was to disable the remaining traps. Chances were that someone or something was going to attack her, and if she wanted to be able to maneuver well, Sakura couldn't have weapons with her death written on it coming her way. Inching her way towards the big, red button, Sakura was careful to tread lightly. If there was anything worse than getting caught by an elementary level prank, it was getting caught twice; there was no way she was letting herself get doused with a bucket of water that was somehow hidden in the ceiling. Once she reached the button, Sakura tentatively pushed it, and to her relief, a faint whir echoed throughout the cold air, and the button turned green. The quiet buzz in the ceiling and the floor had all but faded away.

Perhaps it was out of instinct that she edged her way towards the wall of weapons while she kept her eyes on the environment. Her hand begrudgingly reached out behind her and wrapped around the handle of a wooden katana. It wasn't until she heard a pair of feet scuttle across the ceiling tiles that she carefully unhooked the sword from the wall and held it before her in the fashion she had seen the kendo club hold their shinai. While using swords wasn't Sakura's strength, she knew the basic grip, the basic stance, and in a room as big as this, a weapon that offered range was ideal. It was smarter than chasing someone down to fight close range, needlessly wasting energy. But the sword felt heavy in her hands, and for a moment, her arms sagged under the weight.

_I swore not to do this._ The sword lowered by a fraction of an inch.

_You know there's something in here with you. You can feel its killing intent, can't you?_

Sakura narrowed her eyes. Yes, she could. It was a sickly sensation that crawled over her entire body and slipped straight to her scalp. A fight was inevitable, but a part of her didn't want to betray her mentors.

_Well, if you don't, you're going to get your ass beaten by something or someone you can't even see. I can tell you that much_, her inner voice snickered. _You either use the sword and protect yourself or you sit there like a pig in a slaughterhouse._

_But I made a promise. I promised I wouldn't unnecessarily hurt people._ The thought weighed heavily on Sakura's mind; she was stubbornly clinging onto her last ties to her old home, her old self - the one who stuck to the rules and didn't have a worry in the world.

_Look at it this way. You haven't even been in this school for more than an hour, and people are already trying to attack you - even kill you,_ the voice tried. A pause. _It's time you broke that promise._

_I can't. I won't._

Yet she knew she was lying to herself. Her other self had won a long time ago. She had known what she was getting herself into; she'd made her decision the second she'd picked up the sword, and there was no turning back now. There was no way in hell she was going to survive at this school by being apathetic. These people were serious enough to plant their classroom with traps, no matter how childish some of them seemed, and more than a few had nearly killed her. She had to discard the naive girl within her and focus.

Sakura could feel adrenaline pumping through her veins, her eyes narrowing as she analyzed the room. She could feel her desire to fight surging through her entire body, her primal instincts taking over. Her ears were listening attentively to the eerie silence and her fingers tingled with familiar anticipation. She dared not say it out loud, but she wanted to know who her opponent was and how he or she fought; her old habits were resurfacing after a quiet year.

Guilt pushed aside and the thought of her promise reluctantly chucked out the window, she focused, her body tensing.

There was no point to dwelling on the past.

Sakura steeled her resolve and stepped forward cautiously. Something was coming, and it wasn't her imagination for sure. She could hear it. She could feel it. It was a tension that bubbled faintly, but yes, it was there.

She took another step. Still, nothing.

She needed to be patient.

Her eyes scanned the room, looking for something that would give away a position.

_One more step_, she thought. _One more step._

Lifting her left foot, Sakura paused for a moment, waiting. Then, she set it down. Gently. An almost silent rustle sounded from overhead.

Her head snapped to the ceiling. From above!

She snatched her foot back and leapt out of the way as a dark, caped figure hurtled towards her. It crashed into a heap on the ground. For a few seconds, there was nothing but stillness that filled the gap between Sakura and the dark lump on the floor. The sword remained poised. Her heart was beating furiously, but the mass on the floor didn't even move.

Without warning, a pale hand shot out from under the jumbles of black fabric and clawed at the floor. Sakura winced at the high-pitched squeaks.

_Like nails on a blackboard..._

The drop must have been at least twenty feet, but the caped figure easily leapt to its feet, a chattering sound filling the air as it stood there, brandishing retractable blades that shot out from under its wrists. It seemed to float in the air, a dead look in its eyes. That was all she could see - the eyes - and they glowed from under the shadows of the hood, the rest of the body obscured by the black tattered cape. Yet, Sakura could tell that the build was in the shape of a human.

It drifted and swayed towards her in a ghostly fashion, its feet tapping faintly against the floor as it pattered towards her. Even from a distance, Sakura could see that the caped figure was at least a foot taller than she was. Embroidered on the tip of its hood was a combination of a letter and a number. She could only assume P1 was the thing's name. What it stood for? She had no clue. But she knew that she was in danger; alarms were blaring in her mind.

Sakura tightened her grip on the wooden katana. _What the hell is that!? I thought I disabled everything! I thought a person was watching me!_

_Who cares what you thought?_ Her panicked inner voice screeched. _Just kill it!_

_What if it's a person?_

_You really think people can survive 20 foot drops from the ceiling?_

It stopped in front of her, and it easily towered over her. She watched as it slowly raised a hand. The metal body extensions glinted in the light, and time flowed like honey. Then, it cleaved downwards, making a whistling sound as the knife cut through the air. Sakura danced out of the way and tried a jab, putting her strength behind the blow, but to her surprise, P1 leapt into the air. It flew down at her, the blades under its wrists whirring. She parried each blow, digging her feet into the floor to withstand the impact.

Left, right, up, behind - unrelenting attacks came from virtually every direction, and Sakura matched them all. Yet, she was beginning to tire out, her limbs weary from constant exertion. She needed to end it soon, but none of her attacks seemed to injure P1. What made it worse was that nicks and cuts began appearing on her skin.

_Maybe I'm not hitting hard enough._

In an attempt to finish the fight, Sakura ducked under a swipe and smacked the caped figure's chest area with her wooden katana, every ounce of strength pushed behind it.

P1 flew backwards from the impact but was quick to get back to its feet, not unlike how it recovered from the ceiling-high drop. Sakura watched in horror as its joints shook and clattered, the head twisting around in complete circles in its socket and the knives sliding in and out from under the wrist. The arms and legs bent at funny angles before dangling downwards again. A snapping sound echoed, and strangely enough, it seemed to originate from the head.

_Definitely not human…_

She dodged a barrage of needles that it spit out by rolling to the side.

"Great - more pointy objects. Whoever designed you," she panted, "needs to reconsider his or her life." She leapt over a leg sweep. "And get put in a straightjacket." Sakura delivered a swift stab to its chest.

_Crack!_

Her eyes widened. Her sword was beginning to splinter; a fissure stretched down the length of it.

"Tch." Wood was clearly doing nothing anyway. At most, it stalled her opponent for a few seconds. She needed an alternative, and fast. Sakura's eyes landed on a sword of metal that glistened on the wall.

Quickly, she slammed the wooden sword into the freakshow before turning on her heel and running for an authentic katana. Without a second thought, she wrestled with the string that connected it to the wall. Just as Sakura freed it from the display, she heard the head twisting around in its socket again. It sounded like an angry chatter, and the sound was only growing louder. Unsheathing her new weapon quickly, she whirled around and met a knife strike with her sword. With a yell, she pushed P1 back.

Sakura dashed towards her non-human assailant and knocked aside an arrow that came out from who-knows-where. Swinging her sword, Sakura narrowed her eyes and slashed at P1 with precision, her expression remorseless, and it fell to the floor with a thump, cut cleanly in two. Cautiously, she poked it with her sword. Nothing. So the lone girl quickly began tearing the clothes off the figure to reveal what was underneath. She was hoping the thing she was vigorously stripping wouldn't surprise her any further.

"It's just a wooden doll," she breathed, recognizing the faint swirls embedded in the light brown surface.

The room was quiet once again - the only sound that permeated the air was the sound of Sakura's foot prodding the lifeless, wooden doll halves at her feet, turning them over to see its front.

As if she'd activated something, the top half of the doll whirred back to life. Its fingers sank into the floorboards as zombie-P1 tried to scratch its way toward her.

Her lips twisted into a scowl.

_Tch_. Katana in hand, she sent the it crashing through the doll's head.

Stubborn.

Tracing her eyes to the ceiling, Sakura could see the ceiling tile that had a thin slit through the middle and a few hinges on the sides. It was a nearly invisible trap door. The rest of the ceiling was lined with various beams and poles, no doubt the method to the doll's motion. How it worked, she had no idea, but she was curious. Sakura wanted to know how the doll had moved so fluidly and attacked with the power of a human.

"Genius," she whispered. Sakura crouched down and picked up both halves of the doll, careful to keep the sword beside her.

_It's rather heavy,_ she observed. _Much heavier than how much a wooden doll with a few weapons in it should weigh. I wonder why._

"Maybe there's something else inside the doll," she mused aloud.

Turning them over to see the innards, the lone girl could feel her blood run cold. Inside the doll halves were numerous knives, needles, arrows, and vials, all rigged to come out of little doors, and attached to the arms were strings that stretched to the trap door where the doll had sprung from. Sakura set down the half with the mutilated head and inspected the other half that rested in her lap. Carefully, she pushed aside a bundle of wires and picked out a knife from the assortments of other weaponry. Lightly, she traced a finger over the blade, allowing a tiny trickle of blood to drip from the cut. Her heart clenched at a sudden pressure she felt on her hands that quickly spread over the rest of her body, but she continued with the task.

It's well sharpened, too. Someone had obviously spent a long time on it along with the rest of the doll. Sharpening each and every knife and placing each and every needle in its own place must have been excruciatingly difficult. Then, she gently removed a vial from the insides and unscrewed the lid. Carrying her chemistry group back in Konoha High School clearly had its benefits; she knew better than to touch or smell the mystery substance. She also knew she should have been wearing a pair of gloves and a dinky apron, but in the spirit of science, Sakura poured the contents of the tube onto the doll's empty expression.

The liquid chewed through the wood in record time, turning the light brown color into a yellowish-green hue, cutting through any facial features, disfiguring the poor thing even more. The face morphed and evolved, the nose disintegrating and the thinly cut mouth spreading into a grotesque smile that revealed a set of spiky teeth.

_Thank goodness I stopped it before this stuff came out_. She eyed the remaining contents of the tiny flask with interest.

Sakura prodded the face with the tip of the sword, recognizing what had been in the vial. "It's acid," she realized in awe. Standing shakily and using the sword as support, she turned towards the door that now stood ajar.

"You made this?"

She'd sensed his approach and his quiet anger when she'd started dissecting the doll and examining the hidden weapons. He'd been watching and observing, scrutinizing her every move. There was not a doubt in Sakura's mind: this person was the one who made P1 - the one with the master hands.

_Good going_, her inner voice snickered. _You just pissed off a delinquent by taking his precious doll apart. I bet he spent years on that thing._

"Hey, I'm sorry that I cut your doll in half," she called, "but it came out of nowhere. I couldn't help it."

The hooded figure in the door said nothing. Instead, he reached into his back pocket and slowly brandished more than a few throwing knives. He fanned them out under his masked face and narrowed his eyes.

Sakura tensed, her eyes trained on the mysterious person. They were quite a distance apart, but the throwing knives he was wielding could close the gap rather quickly. Holding the sword up once more, she watched. But in the blink of an eye, he'd disappeared.

_Shit_. She glanced around, and for once in her life, Sakura wished that humans didn't blink. It was a completely ridiculous bodily function that had caused her to lose him.

"You'll pay for that."

Her eyes widened as she whirled around, ducking under a whizzing knife. She drove her sword forward, but it went through nothing but air. Gritting her teeth, Sakura quickly retracted her arm and slashed in an arc at the hooded figure who suddenly appeared beside her, sending him back a few steps. She'd been aiming for his head, hoping to hit a pressure point, but he'd evidently dodged that strike. The sword may have missed its mark, but it had grazed his hood and pushed it back. A hint of rust colored hair peeked out from under the cloth.

_A red head?_

He moved quickly, weaving in and out of her strikes with grace, and responded to her slices with quick flicks of his wrist. Knives flew at her in all directions, and Sakura grit her teeth, swatting them away with her sword.

But the katana was meeting the end of its lifespan; it was riddled with cuts, and the steel blade was losing its edge. Her opponent had quite the throwing arm. To some extent, keeping her distance with a sword had worked; her opponent circled from far away even after he'd all but depleted his supply of knives, but Sakura knew that she was also nearing the limit of her physical capabilities.

So, she resorted to talking.

"Why are you still attacking me?" She asked, trying her goddamn best to hide her fatigue. "I already apologized for breaking it."

Her adversary remained silent as he reached down and wrenched a knife free from the ground. The gash in the floor was jagged and large, and the way he was twirling the knife around didn't make him look any less dangerous.

"Don't talk much, do you? Look, I know you're still upset about your doll-"

He rushed towards her, catching her off guard, and tackled her to the floor. Quickly, the hooded man knocked the sword out of her hand, and his hazel eyes flashed with unbridled rage. His body hovered over hers, his right hand caging her wrists above her head. The other hand positioned a knife at the base of her throat. Sakura's heart was beating out of her chest.

_Well that seemed to tick him off._

"Apologize." His cold voice echoed through the room.

Sakura narrowed her eyes. "I did. You're just too big of an ass to accept my apology."

"You…" he hissed murderously. The knife pressed harder against her skin.

"Let go."

"No."

Sakura huffed angrily. "Ok, then. Since you clearly didn't hear it the first time I said it, I'm sorry I cut your doll in half and -"

"They're not dolls," he interrupted.

Sakura lifted an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"I don't like to repeat myself," he hissed. "But I'll do it because you appear to be deaf. They're not dolls." The red head gave her a good, long glare. "Apologize."

She blinked repeatedly, and it finally dawned upon her. "You're trying to kill me because I called P1 a doll?"

"It's a puppet, you imbecile," he seethed. "There's a difference."

"You came here to fight me just because of some stupid misunderstanding?" Sakura glowered. "Why didn't you just tell me in the first place!?" she cried, exasperated. "You didn't have to scare the living shit out of me with your doll-puppet thing! I almost died!"

"There you go again," he scoffed. The knife was beginning to puncture her skin.

She shook her head in an attempt to alleviate the stress building up in her mind. "Please, tell me. What's the difference?"

"I don't need to explain myself to you," he spat, tightening his grip on her wrists. "You wouldn't understand."

"Hey…" Sakura's eyes twitched as struggled against his hold. The guy was acting like a spoiled little kid, and his personality was starting to remind her of a certain person with chicken butt hair. "What's your name, brat?"

_I bet it starts with an 'S'_, a part of her wagered.

"Brat? I wouldn't tell the likes of you-"

"Hey, Sasori!" A blonde male darted into the room and quickly kneeled by Sakura's captor. "Did you find the new girl? What's she like?"

_Told you._

The third party looked down at Sakura, who was helplessly caught by Sasori and his knife. "Danna-sama, should I come back later?"

Sasori was glaring daggers, and for a moment, his grip loosened as he turned his head to reprimand the bystander.

Taking her chance, Sakura used the last of her strength to fling herself forward, knocking her forehead against Sasori's at full force. Despite the sting on her head and the blood trickling down her collarbone, Sakura wheezed in triumph as Sasori stumbled backwards and clutched his head. She scrambled to her feet and jabbed a finger at the one who'd been restraining her.

"You're an idiot! Who does that anyway?" She clutched her throat, trying to breathe evenly. Sasori said nothing - he was too busy rubbing his head. Sakura held up a finger. "Give me a second...before I shove a cactus up your ass," she coughed. Her mind was numb, and she felt like melting into the floor. Black spots flickered in her vision and bile crawled up her esophagus. In other words, she felt like shit, and she wanted to lie down.

"You the new girl?" The blonde guy asked cheerily.

"What's it … to you?" she panted. Emerald met blue through hazy sight.

"I'm Deidara, one of your new classmates. Nice to meet you, yeah. I'm his partner." He glanced over at Sasori, who was now kneeling down by the fallen P1. "You called his puppet a doll, didn't you."

Sakura nodded, her eyesight clearing a bit. She squinted to get a good look at him. Deidara, too, wore a black hoodie, and a mask hung loosely around his neck. He looked to be about her age, and in his hands, he was fiddling around with some clay. Not really listening to him, Sakura stared at his fingers that pinched and stretched the clay, and in a few short seconds, the formless grey blob had become a bird with details and all.

"Partner?" she echoed. "Like a boyfriend?"

"Definitely not," he immediately deadpanned. Deidara examined Sakura as she fidgeted uncomfortably. His blue eyes and carefree personality (even his absurdly long hair) reminded her a lot of Naruto, but it just so happened to be that he was a potential psychopath. "If you don't want to piss off Sasori, you shouldn't call his 'puppets' 'dolls,' yeah."

Sakura flinched as he leaned closer and cupped a mouth to her ear.

"But there really isn't a difference," Deidara whispered. "He's just prideful about his art. He thinks that the best art will withstand the test of time."

"Deidara." Sasori had removed his hood and mask. His lips were twisted into a half-scowl as he inspected his broken puppet, not even paying attention to the two. "What are you doing?" He pressed a button on the side of his puppet, and the wooden shell was quick to come apart. The weapons Sakura had been examining clattered to the ground. Sasori began picking through them, examining each and every knife and needle.

Deidara shrugged. "Getting to know our new classmate? Sakura, right?" He offered her the bird he'd fashioned.

She lifted an eyebrow at this and shifted her weight onto her back foot. "I never told you my name."

_That bird is shady as fuck_, Sakura thought, but she took it anyway.

"No need to get defensive, yeah." Deidara held up a hand, the other digging through his pocket. "See? Pein sent us your information." He produced a cell phone and handed it to Sakura.

And sure enough, there it was. Everything anyone would want to know about her was displayed on the tiny screen, which included the addresses of any houses she'd ever stayed at, all the schools she'd ever attended, her GPA, and her picture. Sakura remained silent as she continued scrolling.

Pein had amassed quite the database. He had information about her, going down to the tiniest details, like the names of aunts, relatives, friends, her weight, and even her bra size. And it had ended up in the hands of her classmates.

"He sent this to everyone?" Sakura's voice was frigid, the phone beginning to crack under the pressure of her grip.

"Well," Deidara muttered, tilting his head thoughtfully to the side. "Not everyone in the school, but to everyone in Class S, yeah." He paused and looked at her hand. "And you're breaking my phone."

"Good." Sakura tossed him the clay bird and summoned her strength, proceeding to crush the device with her bare hands. It crumpled like tinfoil under the pressure. She then winded her arm back and aimed for the window.

"H-hey, what are you doing, yeah?" Deidara's face was pale as chalk as he reached out for the phone. "Kakuzu's gonna kill me."

But he was too late.

In her fury, Sakura had launched it at the window, shattering the panes of glass as it departed from the room's premises. They stood in silence, the sound of the annihilated device hitting the ground reaching their ears.

_Thunk!_

Deidara's jaw dropped the floor. His hand was outstretched and frozen in time, reaching out dramatically for something that would never come back. "My phone…"

Uh oh.

Once again, Sakura had put her anger before rational thought, and she began sweating like a pig.

_He's probably pissed. I swear, if he's anything like Tobi..._

"Nevermind the phone." Sasori stood and patted the dust off his pants. The battered puppet's remains lay scattered at his feet. "We have an assignment to complete." His eyes fell onto Sakura. "You're coming with us."

She chewed nervously on her lip. "Assignment?" Her anger ebbed away, but it was soon replaced with doubt. There was no way he meant sitting down and breaking open a Calculus textbook to answer a few practice questions, and he definitely didn't mean doing a Biology project.

_So what could it mean?_

"We must finish the assignment before the end of the day," the redhead continued in his controlled tone, effectively ignoring her question. "We have much to do."

He turned away and drifted towards the door. Sakura peeked at Deidara. He nodded and took off after Sasori. He didn't look too angry; she had just wrecked his phone. But she wasn't too worried about the cheery blonde guy. Her eyes zoomed in on Sasori's back.

_It's always the quiet ones…_

With the way he'd pinned her down and stuck a knife right against her skin without a figment of remorse sent shivers up her spine. He was living proof that she needed to be careful. The blood at her throat wasn't bleeding quite as heavily, but it had dribbled down to stain her white collar. Sakura swiped the blood and smeared it on her thumb.

_Wow._

"Hey, you coming?" Deidara stuck his head back into the room and motioned for her to hurry up.

Sakura blinked, then shook her head.

"Sure… I guess." Sakura stumbled after them, the idea of an assignment plaguing her mind.

_It can't be good._

But she was curious.

Her feet carried her back out into the lounge-like hall, to find that the pair had been waiting for her. She stared at them quizzically.

"Take this, yeah."

Deidara tossed a bag at her, and she caught it.

"What's this?" She fingered the plastic-wrapped item inside.

"Don't want to get caught, do you?" The corners of his lips curled upwards, and his eyes narrowed. "Put it on,"

Sakura blinked. "Wait, what do you mean get caught?"


	3. Chapter 3

There was no doubt in Sakura's mind that the "assignment" in question that she was forced to go do was something shady. She looked down at the new clothes she now wore, which consisted of a hoodie and sweats, which were all black. The symbol she'd seen on the carpet was emblazoned on the back of her hoodie - a single red cloud lined with silver. She still didn't quite understand what it stood for, but it'd taken some major convincing on Deidara's part for her to finally wear the clothes he'd given her. Sasori had simply huffed and stood aside, tapping his foot impatiently and tinkering with some wooden scraps, no doubt still angry that she called his puppet a doll.

She sorely regretted agreeing to wear the clothes Deidara had given her. Ame was hot and humid, and the sweats and hoodie weren't making the uncomfortable, sticky feeling any better. Sakura could feel her skin and flesh melting off her bones, yet she didn't dare to lift her arms and adjust her clothing; she could feel sweat accumulating in the places where she forgot to put deodorant. She just had to deal with it - if she survived walking with them for the first twenty minutes, then she could surely survive the rest of the way. The skies above were splashed with dark, grey clouds, and Sakura wished that rain would descend from the heavens and gloriously wash away her perspiration.

Glancing at Deidara and Sasori, Sakura saw that they appeared to be perfectly accustomed to the hellish, muggy weather (unless they were hiding their discomfort, which meant they were really talented actors). But as relaxed as the two in front of her seemed, Sakura couldn't help but anxiously beat herself up mentally as she trailed behind them, dragging her feet.

_Why did I agree to come here?_ The corners of of lips twitched. She had no idea what had possessed her to agree to go with them, except for her raging curiosity that never seemed to quell unless she got answers, and she hated that part of herself sometimes. It'd gotten her into plenty of trouble as kid. Then again, the situation hadn't been in her favor; she had been worn out - exhausted- and Sasori and Deidara would have had no trouble overwhelming her. Resistance would have been a waste of energy.

Sakura fingered the aglet on the cord of her hoodie nervously. Deidara had mentioned something about her not wanting to get caught, which had only gotten her more curious and agitated; in her attire, she realized that she would look rather similar to the two of them if she covered her hair. Neither Sasori nor Deidara had told her where they were going and what they were going to do yet, but she wanted to know; she hated being left in the dark after all. That didn't mean she couldn't guess, though. Sakura could imagine that they were going to throw her in the middle of a turf war or even make her stand guard at a drug deal. Then again, she was getting surprised left and right. For all she knew, they might even ask her to dress up as a unicorn and frolic around in damn a cornfield. With the people at her new school, anything could happen, so she had to ask.

"Are we going to get participate in physical aggression?" She winced at how stiff her question sounded. She'd always been teased for being extremely formal with others. The worry was clear in her voice, though.

After a pause, Deidara decided to reply. "Nope, yeah."

Sakura furrowed her eyebrows in confusion at his response. "So we are going to beat people up?"

_That's good,_ her more violent side decided.

She rolled her eyes. The fight back in the classroom had revitalized a part of her that had lain dormant for a full year, and the excitement wasn't going to subside anytime soon, but she forced her mind to control itself. _No. Just because I broke my promise to Tsunade and Kakashi doesn't mean I'm going to run around beating people up for no reason. _

_Pft. You're no fun. Just give in already._

But Sakura had to appreciate one thing, and that was Deidara's rather casual personality. Even if he had an insufferable speech quirk, the blonde was easier to talk to than his red-headed "partner" who had a mile-long stick up his ass. Furthermore, he hadn't attacked her yet.

"No, we're not." Deidara replied. He looked at her strangely before turning back around. "We're not beating anyone up today, yeah." Their footsteps were quiet against the cracked concrete road. "Why, did you want to?"

"No."

He shrugged. "You're pretty calm for someone who's joined Class S, yeah. And here I was, thinking you were some ripped, crazy chick after what I saw."

Sakura lifted an eyebrow. "What did you see?" The most he'd seen was all of the information about her that he'd ever want to know and Sasori holding a knife to her neck in a rather intimate position that could easily be taken out of context.

"Tobi's smashed mask." Deidara had slowed down, matching his pace with hers. He now walked leisurely at her side, his hands stuck casually in his pockets. He offered no reaction when Sakura sidestepped to put more space between them. Sasori walked alone in front of them now, leading the way. "Normally he doesn't even let anyone touch his mask, yeah. If you even brush it with a finger, he'll get super angry." He glanced down at her and flashed a toothy grin. "You might even end up on his 'List of People Tobi Will Kill.'"

Sakura froze in her tracks. "Kill?" She stared at Deidara's form as he continued to walk on without her. The memory of Tobi's crushing aura sent a shiver down her spine. Just thinking about that swirly orange mask made her choke.

Her blonde companion waved his hand dismissively. "Tobi is kinda bipolar - just without the depression part, yeah. As long as you don't make him too angry, he won't kill you. Don't worry about it, though." He noticed that she'd been left behind. He stopped and turned around. "You ok?"

"Uh… Just fine." She smiled uncomfortably as she shuffled back to Deidara's side. Her fingernails dug deep into her flesh.

At that moment, several thoughts flashed through her mind, none of them particularly optimistic. Oh shit. I fucked up. I'm going to die. It's over.

She bit her lip as she ran through the several ways she could be killed that she'd seen on tv. Strangling, drowning, electrocution, poison; the list was endless. With enough imagination, anything could become a weapon. The plastic bag that was drifting through the wind alongside them might be slipped over her head, and the dirty sock that poked out from a tipped over garbage can could be filled with coins or rocks and be used as a bludgeon.

"So…" Sakura began awkwardly, "does that mean he's going to kill me? Because I kind of … uh... really demolished that mask." Her eyes darted along the rooftops of houses. She scanned fences for peepholes where Tobi could be watching her with a knife behind his back. Quickly, she threw a glance over her shoulder.

"Hmm… Maybe."

"Maybe!?""

"But you're new meat, yeah. I think he'll get over it."

"You think!?" Sakura's sweat-covered hands flew to her hair, and they tangled themselves in her sweaty pink hair. She pulled and pulled, completely frustrated with everything. Ignoring the stinging sensations on her scalp, she stared at Deidara, bewildered. "I'm going to die!"

"Then put him in a headlock," he shrugged, reaching into his pocket to reveal another blob of clay. "That tends to calm him down." He fashioned two small figures, one that looked similar to him, and one that looked like Tobi, which was getting strangled by an arm.

Intrigued, she tilted her head. "Headlock? Really? How do you - wait. That's not even the problem!"

"Don't worry about it." Deidara replied. He squashed the clay back into a formless heap and stuffed it back in his pocket. "Hey, Sasori! Are we there yet?"

"Yeah." Sasori had stopped, and was now facing a grey, nondescript, concrete wall; it appeared to be the side of an office building of some detective agency. He leaned in, narrowing his eyes, seeming to take in every detail: the crack in the bottom corner, the tiny splotch of black in the middle, the various bugs crawling across the higher portions. Experimentally, he lifted a finger and traced it down the rough surface before rubbing his hands together tactfully. A small smile spread across his thin lips.

"Why is he smiling like that?" Sakura whispered, not really thinking at all. "Does he have a wall fetish?" A secret hideout was a too extreme of an answer, and there certainly wasn't going to be a secret message hidden on the wall (there was really nothing written on it except for a few curse words here and there). But there wasn't a really good reason she could think of, considering Sasori was staring intensely at a wall while wistfully sliding a finger down it.

"HAHAHA, yeah!" Deidara burst into laughter and grabbed at his sides, tears appearing in the corners of his eyes. "Yeah, he totally has a wall fetish."

At that Sasori stiffened and Sakura paled. She hadn't meant to let him hear that, and he was most definitely pissed, but Deidara continued to laugh, slapping his hand on his knee. She panicked. Desperately, she balled a hand into a fist and swung it into his stomach. He grunted, doubling over and crumpling to the floor, but persisted in laughing, much to Sakura's dismay. He wildly beat the floor with his fists.

"Hahaha," he whimpered as he rolled around on the floor. "Ow, my stomach, yeah." Deidara clutched his stomach and resumed his maniacal laughter. "Hehehe! A wall-fetish. You're amazing! Out of all of the things you could've said..."

"I didn't mean to say that," she tried, wildly waving her hands. "I mean, it's not every day that you see people look at a wall like that, you know -"

"Deidara," Sasori hissed. He was still facing the wall, but disapproval was clear in his voice as he continued to brush the wall with his fingers. Sakura sighed in relief - he wasn't blaming her for saying something completely and utterly ridiculous. Giving the wall one final pat, Sasori reached into his pocket and pulled out a vaguely red cylinder. He gave it a good shake before aiming at the wall.

"Um, what are you doing?"

Hearing her, he stopped and stared at her with a unamused eyes, his expression dead, so Sakura inched closer to the red head, trying to get a glimpse of what he was holding. The letters on the label became clearer. "S-P-R-A…" Her eyes widened in shock as she registered the printed words. "You're spray painting the wall?"

"That's our assignment for the day, yeah." They watched as Deidara leapt to his feet and smirked. His unperturbed expression suggested that he'd already recovered from the impromptu punch and laughing fit. "We're currently expanding our territory, so we need to mark it. Last week, the area around here belonged to some no-name school we forgot about."

_So kind of like a dog peeing on a fire hydrant._ The words nearly escaped from her lips, but she managed to bite her tongue just in time. There was no need to make someone who was friendly towards her hate her.

"What happened to the no-name school, and who is this 'we'?"

"Kaboom! It blew up beautifully, yeah." Deidara made tiny sparkling motions with his fingers, a huge grin on his face. "It displaced quite a few students, but it's not like they cared anyway."

Sasori scoffed. His dull expression heavily suggested that he was irritated and wanted to slap his partner. "Beatiful? That explosion was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. It was all gone in the blink of an eye. True art lasts forever." As if he was making a point, he directed the spray paint nozzle at the wall.

"Wait!" Sakura's hand flew out and smacked the can out of his hand, her heart skipping a beat as he slowly turned his head to glare at her. She ignored his boiling anger and crossed her arms. "That's vandalism of public property. It's illegal." Her voice was firm.

"Tch." Sasori reached down, his hand wrapping around the spray can. "This is why I didn't explain myself to you. You wouldn't understand."

She rolled her eyes, frustration tingling in her fingertips. "It doesn't matter whether or not I understand. We're not spray painting someone's wall. Especially not a detective's wall! Do you want a death sentence? If you're going to spray paint a wall, then you do it somewhere where they don't have connections to the police and specialize in dealing with juvenile and organized crime."

A heavy silence filled the air. Sakura's heels dug into the ground, her teeth ground together; a gut feeling told her she'd just pissed him off again, but she stood her ground. Sasori narrowed his eyes at her before glancing at Deidara and nodding. "She's right," he declared. "Even if the detective who works here is an idiot, this isn't an ideal location."

"Thank you," Sakura sighed in relief, shutting her eyes and ignoring the 'idiot' part. She'd finally gotten some sense through to him. "Can I please go home now?"

"I was foolish in believing I should display my art here; the police might catch us. We're relocating."

Her eyes snapped open and focused on the disappearing figure clothed in black. "That's completely not what I meant," she cried, running after him. "Hey! Wait up!"

Sakura chased after the mane of red hair, dodging the few passerbys that trudged along the streets, intent on saving an innocent wall from being vandalized. Deidara remained silent, but he followed her like a shadow. She wished he didn't though; she felt pressured to sprint when she desperately wanted to walk and rub her burning legs. And by no means was Sasori a slow runner. He was quick to turn corners without losing much momentum, and Sakura nearly lost him when they hit a crowd of people milling about. If the boy she was chasing after didn't have a wall fetish, Sakura had no idea why he was running so fast. She and Deidara ducked into alleyways and vaulted over railings in the pursuit of the running red head until they screeched to a halt at a dead end.

"I swear he went this way," Sakura panted. She ran her sleeve along her brow. It was way too muggy to be running, and her entire body was dripping with sweat. Maybe Sasori had gone another way; her eyes were clouded with weariness and sweat, so her fuzzy recognition skills were questionable enough. But the fence that loomed before her seemed too high to climb, and no one would be crazy enough to scramble over it to draw on a wall.

"He did, yeah. Danna-sama climbed the fence."

_Of course he did._

"Shit." She buried her face in her hands. "All this for a wall," she mumbled. "I'm surrounded by freaks." She glared pointedly at Deidara. "I suppose you're going to follow him by taking this shortcut."

"He is my partner, yeah, " he shrugged. "Pein says we have to stick together, so you have to come with us, too. The faster we regroup with Sasori, the better." Misinterpreting the pout on her lips, he added, "It's not that hard. Watch me. Just look out for any cops, yeah." Before Sakura could reply, Deidara yanked the hood over her hair and then let his fingers slip around the chain links. He hoisted himself up. Methodically, he wedged the tips of his shoes into the temporary footholds, quickly moving up before his shoes lost their grip. In no time, he'd climbed up and pivoted himself over, dropping down on the opposite side. The wires rattled quietly. "You coming?"

"Uh…" Sakura poked at the metal, her eyebrows furrowed. "Can I be honest?"

"Go for it."

"I've never climbed a chain-link fence. Furthermore, I'm wearing a skirt. And I get the feeling you're going to make me participate in illegal activity even if I stop Sasori." She tugged at the ends of her hem. "I can't climb up this fence."

"It doesn't matter," Deidara replied. "You're wearing shorts underneath, yeah. Rather nice ones, I must admit. Besides, you have sweats on."

Immediately, her cheeks flushed red. "How did you know?" she practically shrieked.

"Tobi, yeah. He tells me everything."

"Motherf-"

"-And if you don't follow us, you're going to clean the toilets for a week because you would be disobeying Pein, yeah. You coming or not?"

Sakura flung her hands into the air. "Just tell the world everything, why don't you? You guys already know everything about me. You might as well announce to the whole world my social security number as well and make me kill someone; you can't ruin my life more than it already is!" With a huff, she kicked the chain-link fence with full force, filling the air with cacophonous clanking as the metal groaned under the force of the impact. A dent the size of a plate appeared where the side of her foot had met the fence. "I didn't want to come to a school full of gangsters."

A lone blue eye scrutinized her in her fury, and lips tugged into a smile. They parted to say something, but shut immediately.

"Hey!"

Sakura snapped out of her anger and whirled around. A uniformed man who was standing across the main street pointed a finger at her. "You're damaging public property! Remain where you are, and state your name! You as well." He gestured towards Deidara, too, who appeared nonchalant, but had decided to cover his hair with his hood. She cringed at the sound of his voice.

Her heart was pounding in her ears, her fingers twitching ever so slightly. Her knees bent, her muscles grew taut as the police man's form grew. His mouth was twisted into an angry scowl as he marched at her with his hands on his hips.

"What do you think you're doing, almost putting a hole through that fence? You'll have to pay for damages. Seriously, kids these days," he spat in a high-pitched, pre-pubescent voice.

"Uh oh," she whispered. Slowly, Sakura took small steps backwards until she no longer could. The heels of her shoes were pressed firmly against the fence. Though she couldn't see, she could feel a smirk stretching back across Deidara's lips.

"Better figure out how to climb a fence now, yeah, before the policeman comes and gets you," he said. "Unless you want to pay a couple hundred dollars and give him the satisfaction of scolding another teenager, yeah."

"Can I go around?" She twisted her neck to get a glimpse of her associate.

Deidara shook his head and stuck his hands in his pockets. "You can't cross over to this side without going all the way back to that last stop light we were at, yeah. And that was pretty far away."

"Well, I'm not going to beat up a cop," Sakura cried. "That's worse than spray painting a wall!"

"Then get over the fence, yeah," he said, as if it were the most obvious option she had.

The badge pinned to the cop's shirt gleamed brightly against the drab, grey surroundings, and though Sakura would have appreciated this symbol a while ago, now she could not - not when she was the one who was going to get in trouble. At least her little skirmish back at Ame High School had been pardoned because of Pein (who she thought was crazy), but Sakura was sure to get in official trouble if she stuck around. He was quite a distance away, still, but was closing in fast. She was beginning to feel cornered.

"Dammit!"

Without wasting another second, Sakura followed the example she'd seen earlier, finding a stable foothold and hooking her fingers through the gaps. The metal bit into her skin and chewed off tiny chunks of her shoes. Her breath was shallow and uneven as she clumsily coordinated her arms and legs. Her chest contracted as she clung to the fence, fingers slipping because of her slick, sweaty palms. Moving as fast as she could, Sakura scaled the fence, but she knew that she was going too slowly.

"You might want to hurry up, yeah."

Sakura narrowed her eyes, wishing she could jab a middle finger in Deidara's face. "You think I don't know? I've never tried this before, so shut up!" She blinked the sweat out of her eyes and forced her arms to pull her up; they were starting to feel numb. Her hands shook, and her fingers felt raw.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going? Get back down!" Sakura shivered - it sounded like the police man was yelling right in her ear with his sonar voice. Looking up, she could see she still had quite the distance to go. Heartbeat quickening, she looked down to see that the policeman was reaching for her legs. She steeled her nerves and climbed higher, praying that his arms were short and wouldn't touch her. But her heart nearly stopped when she felt the fence rattle under additional weight.

"Deidara, what the hell are you doing!?" She hung on for dear life as he began climbing back up the fence, adding more unsteadiness to her already delicate balance. She watched in horror as he sat, perched directly above her.

_Please don't tell me you're doing the '300' kick._

Sakura recoiled as his hand shot out at her, fearing a punch, a slap, or a kick to the face - any kind of betrayal from Deidara in an attempt to buy himself some more time. As nice as he appeared, Sakura wasn't sure if she trusted him yet (he was a delinquent after all).

He chuckled at her expression and to her surprise, stretched his hand out further. "Grab on. That was actually pretty good for a first try, yeah."

Beneath her, the policeman commanded Sakura to get back down. "Don't you dare climb any further. As a member of the Ame Police Force," he said this while proudly displaying his police badge and information, "I demand that you let go of the fence this instant!"

Above her, Deidara snorted, squinting to read his name. "If she lets go, she'll hurt herself, yeah, Mister To-shi-hi-de. Come on, hurry up." His hand remained suspended in the air, waiting for her to take it.

Sakura bit her lip, knowing she had little time to make a decision, but there was no need to wait longer; she knew she was at her limits - her feet were nearly slipping. She stared hard into his eyes, sending a threat for precautionary purposes, before unhooking her fingers and clapping a hand into his. Immediately, his grip on her hand tightened, and with a heave, he hauled her up beside him. A hand rested securely on her waist as they balanced on an inch wide bar.

"Geez, your hands are really sweaty, yeah."

Heat rose to her cheeks and she struggled to defend herself. "Hey, I was really nervous!"

"Yeah, sure."

Sakura was about to jam a fist into his face when she realized that number one: he was holding onto her, and if he went down, she would too (his grip was rather strong for a guy who looked like he cared more about his appearance). Number two: Deidara seemed more comfortable with the height they were at, and would no doubt be able to maneuver around better than she would, which meant that if he somehow dodged her punch, he'd push her off. Number three: if she somehow got caught by the annoyance of a policeman named Toshihide who was screaming at them, she'd get in even more trouble. So Sakura decided to keep her hands to herself and let Deidara handle the situation, though she really wanted to make him pay for scaring her and almost making her fall.

"How dare you? I don't know who you are, but I will report you and find you all! Do you understand me?" Policeman Toshihide squawked, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his pointy nose.

Rubbing a hand on her forehead, Sakura puffed out a long breath. "His voice is so annoying."

The blonde shrugged and flashed a grin. "See? You did it. Be thankful I covered up your hair with your hood. Now let's go find Danna-Sama -" He was cut short by an object, commonly known as Sakura's fist, colliding with his abdomen. "Ow! What was that for, yeah?"

"That's for scaring me." She jabbed his stomach once more, glad to have caught him off guard and opted for a target that wouldn't knock him unconscious when her desire for revenge overtook her for a moment. "I thought I was going to die when you jumped back onto the fence," she accused with a huff. "Let's just get out of here."

They both looked down at the yammering police man beneath them who was waving his fists and stomping his feet, yelling empty threats. Getting a better look, Sakura could tell that he was actually rather short and didn't appear intimidating at all, with his silly expression and his poorly slicked back hair. Sakura looked at Deidara wearily and motioned for him to follow her. Going down wasn't as bad as going up; all she had to do was jump onto the dumpster that sat beside the fence. She landed with a loud clunk, her companion following soon after, and sprang onto the floor.

Walking away, Sakura could hear police man Toshihide continue to scold them, but his voice was quick to fade; her heart was still beating out of her chest from the exhilarating experience. But she remembered why she'd even bothered to skin her hands in the first place. She swept her eyes over the walls of dilapidated buildings and sighed. "We lost him. Great."

"No, we didn't. I think know where Sasori went, yeah." Deidara pointed down an alleyway. "He probably went to the park."

She snorted. "The park? Why the park?" They walked side by side down the narrow passage.

"There's a lot of space to work with and there are no cops there. Apparently, the park also belonged to that no name school that blew up a the other day." Deidara tilted his head. "It's strange how they were able to keep that territory for so long, yeah. But as long as we get one of our markings on their domain, we should be fine. We just need to send a message."

"How do you know all these things?" Sakura wondered out loud. It was strange how he knew the politics of the local gangsters so well.

Deidara shrugged. "The information was sent to my phone. The one that you broke, yeah."

_Shit._

He suddenly pulled back his sleeve and took a glance at a black watch that was strapped around his wrist. "By the way, Sasori has already started spray painting."

"I figured as much." Sakura shook her head. She'd spent far too long trying to get over that fence, after all. "Earlier, didn't you say that someone was expanding domain? What was that about?"

"Ah, that. Sasori and I are part of the Akatsuki, yeah."

Akatsuki… The name sounded familiar enough. She rolled the name on her tongue, trying to recall where she'd heard it before. There was no doubt in her mind Tsunade had once mentioned the name in one of her announcements, but no one bothered to listen to them back then. Sakura wrinkled her forehead as she racked her brain for answers.

_You could just ask him_, the genius within her suggested.

_… Good idea._

"So," she started, lacing her fingers together. "What is the Akatsuki?"

"It's an organization that wishes to implement peace. Don't ask me how it works specifically, yeah. I just do what I'm told."

Sakura blinked. "Peace?" That definitely wasn't been the answer she'd been expecting, and Sasori didn't seem to a peaceful kind of person. Furthermore, it was strange how they were spray-painting their 'territory' like hoodlums in order to send a message. But an organization striving for peace was a step in the right direction.

"Peace," Deidara repeated with a nod. "I was forced to join, yeah, but to be honest, peace isn't really my thing."

"I see." Sakura scooted away as far as she could from the blonde, trying to forget that he'd just saved her hide and a lifetime of embarrassment of being caught by an incompetent policeman. "You're sure it promotes peace, right?"

"Yeah."

"So how do I join?" She began twiddling her thumbs casually. "Peace is a good thing, I think," she added quickly, seeing Deidara raise an eyebrow. "That's actually what I wanted when I was told I was moving here, to Ame."

"Really?" He wrinkled his forehead. "You're really good at fighting, yeah. You fought head-to-head with Danna and caught Tobi off guard. But are you sure that you'd join the Akatsuki out of your own free will?"

"Yeah… but I didn't mean to hit Tobi," she muttered, kicking aside a pebble.

In a way though, there was a surge of pride that swept through Sakura's mind. Having someone who was probably as strong as her, if not stronger, recognize her years of training made her rather giddy inside. Having been one of the physically weakest people to join her class, Sakura sweated tears of blood for years before finally accomplishing brute strength that could split bricks and wood.

"Either way, you don't need to worry about joining - you're already part of the Akatsuki."

Sakura blinked, caught off guard. "What?"

"Did Pein not tell you? Anyone who gets into Class S automatically becomes a member. He only wants the best of the best to help him spread his vision of peace, yeah."

Of course he's the leader of a peace organization. Why didn't I think of that earlier.

"Oh." She stifled a groan of exasperation. "Did this information happen to be on the back of the info sheet he gave me?"

Deidara nodded.

_So maybe I judged too quickly._

Her heart sank a bit, knowing it was a bad habit of hers to judge quickly, which meant Pein was actually a pretty good guy, however threatening his appearance was, and so was everyone else in Class S. She peeked over at Deidara.

_I mean, I guess he looks kind of nice. Maybe he was forced to join because of Sasori,_ she speculated. _But Sasori's pretty mean_. Her thoughts then drifted to P1 and the general atmosphere of Class S's classroom. If the Akatsuki really believed in peace, then why was every square inch of the room rigged in a way to maim or kill? Then again, Ame High School was infested with high school gangsters and an organization advocating peace was bound to get in conflicts with them and needed a method of defense. She also recalled how Sasori had brandished and pointed a knife at her because of a stupid misnomer. Sakura knew that the need for self-defense was a poor explanation, but she didn't take long to dwell on that thought; she could ask later anyway, and they were sure to have their reasons.

A swingset creaked off in the distance, and the hissing sound of a spray can penetrated the gloomy, morning air. Undoubtedly, it was Sasori who was using the spray can. Sakura picked her way through rusted scraps of metal that lay strewn on the floor, stepping past carcasses of broken plastic horses and cows to follow the the faint sound of paint leaving its container. And there he was, spray painting a wall. He seemed to be completely focused, not even reacting when she and Deidara stopped beside him.

He had his mask on and was finishing the final touches to his design of red. Every move he made was precise, controlled, and calculated. Sakura stared in wonder. Even though she knew what Sasori was doing was unmistakably bad, it was stunning at the same time. He'd painted the red cloud she'd seen on the carpet in the top floor back in Ame High School with artistic genius. Filling in the final spot of gray wall, Sasori stepped back, slowly pulling down his mask, and inspected his creation with a satisfied smirk on his face before capping the can and stuffing it back in his pocket. Though Sakura hadn't saved the wall from the paint, a tiny part of her was happy she failed; never in her life did she think she'd ever see something like what Sasori had created with simple spray paint. She almost felt guilty for smacking the spray paint out of his hand earlier.

It was simply "...beautiful," she sighed, taking in the contrast between the well-defined lines at the curves and the slight wispy effect at the tail; it was a bold yet delicate design. A thin silver hue bordered the cloud's shape, and she realized just what it meant. "Akatsuki," she mused aloud. It was a fitting name. Sakura tore her eyes away from the cloud and cast them upon Sasori's blank expression, her eyes wide with wonder. "It's breathtaking."

Admittedly, she hadn't gotten a closer look at the clouds she'd seen while moving into Ame, but now she wished she had. The red head's gaze met hers, and it softened by a fraction of a degree. He stood a bit straighter, and his mouth was no longer compressed into a hard line. Sakura turned her attention back to his masterpiece, and unknowingly, her hands lifted slowly, wanting to touch the image, but a swift hand flashed forward and snatched her wrists. Startled, she jumped.

"The paint is still drying," he said quietly. His voice held no malice, but it was firm.

"Oh. Sorry." She quickly withdrew her hand and stood there awkwardly between the two, her hands held behind her back. "I didn't mean to do that."

Sasori grunted. "It's fine."

Beside them, Deidara snorted, crossing his arms. "Whatever. My art is better than his, yeah."

Shooting him a dirty look, Sasori ran a hand through his messy, rust-colored hair. "Let her decide for herself. Her judgment appears to be better than yours, anyway."

"That's because she hasn't seen it yet." He motioned with a finger for the girl to follow him, which she did out of pure curiosity. "Come on, I'll show you." He strode off to an opposing wall across the tiny, residential street and patted his pockets. "Where did I put them?" he muttered. "No, that's my clay. More clay. What's this doing in here?" He poked through his pockets some more before his expression lit up. "Found them, yeah. Now, watch."

In his hand were tiny spheres, not unlike those which contained the vomit - inducing stench that had exploded on Sakura earlier. She shuddered at the bad memories she'd made only a little while ago.

"Uh, you might want to stand aside." Deidara had stepped back a few feet and had his throwing arm ready. Getting a good look at what he was holding, Sakura could tell that it was encased paint.

Quickly taking his advice, she put a safe distance between herself and the wall, prudently pinching her nose. She watched as he flung the spheres at the wall, making them to burst on impact and splatter it with red paint that dried almost instantly, allowing his creation to maintain its shape. The sound of the hits reverberated loudly in Sakura's ears, disorienting her - grabbing her head and giving it a good shake did wonders to restore her focus. She examined what Deidara had made. It was unique, but she didn't quite understand what the hell it was. At best, it was a conglomeration of circles that held no particular form.

"Do you like it?" The blonde's eyes looked at her expectantly.

"What is that?" It wasn't until the words left her mouth that Sakura understood how much of an ass she sounded like when she had asked the question. Nervously, she clapped her hand over her mouth to prevent anything else from escaping.

"It's art, yeah," Deidara replied indignantly. "And I did it with a bang."

"Pft."

"Danna, stop laughing. Let me borrow your silver."

Begrudgingly, he held out his hand and let Sasori drop a small can of silver spray paint into his palm. Deidara grumbled curses and insults to nobody in particular as he popped the lid off sharply and shook the bottle with a bit too much strength. He pointedly aimed the nozzle at the edge of the group of red splatters and began to stiffly traced them, albeit rather quickly. His lips were twisted into the angriest of scowls while he continued the outline. It was only when the end of the silver paint met its beginning that Deidara appeared remotely happy. He slapped the silver back into Sasori's open hand and pointed towards the now-clearly-defined cloud on the wall.

"It's the Akatsuki cloud, yeah. Was it really that hard to see?"

_Oh._

"N-no." Sakura tilted her head, struggling to find words. "It was just a lot to take in." Internally, she winced at the lie.

_It wasn't until he traced it that I knew what it was._

Of course, she couldn't say this out loud, and she skillfully bit her tongue, nearly drawing blood. But she had to concede that the more she looked at Deidara's cloud, the more she liked it. His was more spontaneous and bright. Though it wasn't something breath-stopping, the conglomeration of red circles was certainly interesting in its technique and texture; Sakura had never seen anything quite like it.

"You're a failure of an artist," Sasori said rather bluntly. "That's why she couldn't tell what it was." He smiled smugly at Deidara.

"No, that's not true," Sakura interjected, earning her a slightly annoyed stare from Sasori. She offered a tentative smile to the artistically distressed blonde. "I think that the fact that the paint dries quickly is what makes your cloud intriguing." She let a finger trace the bumps and ridges of crimson that'd formed. "I like the freedom … if that's what it can be called."

The partners stared at her. They then turned and stared at each other.

"I thought she was the one who could be the tiebreaker in our argument, yeah."

"Agreed. Since she can't decide, we should settle this now." With a shake of his arms, knives slid out from Sasori's sleeves and into his hands.

Deidara chuckled as he shifted his weight and revealed a BB gun that'd been strapped to his waist and hidden from sight. "Why are you so agitated today, yeah? Could it be because you finally understand that art is a bang?" The gun was promptly unfastened and aimed.

"Never," the knife user sniffed.

_Why is it suddenly my fault? Oh jeez, they're just like kids but worse. How fitting we're at a playground._ But that didn't matter too much, even if she was panicking at the sudden spike in tension between them; there was a bigger issue at hand, both physically and metaphorically speaking.

"Um, maybe you guys shouldn't be fighting right here and now," Sakura interrupted. She squinted into the distance and trained her eyes on a large group of people that carried dangerous looking weapons approaching them and wore scowls on their faces. Her fingers tingled as she counted more than twenty people, all sauntering confidently towards them.

Deidara threw a glance over his shoulder and sneered. "They're nothing but small fry, yeah. We can always deal with them later."

"What happened to keeping the peace!?" she cried. "Isn't that your job?"

"Say, Deidara," Sasori said, looking over Deidara's shoulder. Sakura rolled her eyes when she realized he'd just ignored her question. Again. "Don't they look familiar?"

The group of people stopped behind Deidara. Sakura caught her breath as her eyes absorbed the situation before her. Several tattooed men with piercings, scruffy beards, and rippling muscles angrily cracked their knuckles. The leader of them (at least Sakura assumed he was the leader) was a skinhead. His eyes were narrowed to slits, and a sly smile was stretched across his face. He wore an oversized jersey that proudly displayed his scarred watermelon-like biceps and jeans that sagged inappropriately below his waistline.

However, Deidara wasn't affected in the slightest. He casually turned on his heel and looked the leader right in the eye. "Yeah, they do. I think they're from that no-name blown up school." He scanned the head thug before him. "Isn't your name Onishi or something, yeah?"

"That's right," he smirked. "And who is this?" He gestured at Sakura, who flinched at his sudden movement. "Seems kinda useless, doesn't she? I guess she's just your plaything." His eyes roved over her figure, leaving her feeling uncomfortable and somehow violated.

_Useless? Plaything?_

She bristled at the insults. She'd heard that word several times throughout her time back in Konoha, especially when she was a kid, and she hated being called useless. A strained smile appeared on her face as she tried to control her anger. Unfortunately, though, counting to ten wasn't helping, and neither was thinking of her happy place, which just so happened to be the dojo. Furthermore, she was definitely not their plaything - she hadn't even known Sasori and Deidara for more than two hours. Her blood was beginning to boil. There was nothing more that Sakura wanted to do than beat his face so far into the ground he'd become part of the concrete. Her fingers twitched, begging to curl up and form fists.

Sasori narrowed his eyes. "She is not of your concern. What do you want?"

Onishi twirled the wooden plank in his hands. "You're putting your mark on our territory," he observed. "I could hear it from a mile away."

"So? It looks better than your stupid alligator, yeah. Our name is also better than yours," Sakura's blonde companion retorted.

The wooden plank's twirling halted. A crimson hue stained Onishi's face and shiny bald head. "We, the Southern Alligators, will not be insulted. Although our school is obliterated, we still stand," he declared. The thugs behind him cheered in agreement.

"You're right, it does sound stupid," Sakura whispered to Deidara, hoping she'd been loud enough for Onishi to hear.

_That Bastard deserves it for calling me a useless harlot. And Ame isn't even in the south._

"Damn right it is," the blonde agreed.

"Oi," the newly dubbed Bastard growled. "Woman. You dare insult me? If you prostrate yourself before me, I'll consider forgiving you, you trash! "

Sakura froze, the anger within her reaching boiling point. "What did you just call me?" She allowed her hands to curl into fists and her knees to bend. He had crossed a line for the third time and insulted her and everything she'd worked towards, and there was nothing he could do to quell her anger now except beg for mercy. Sakura stalked forwards, grabbing the back of Deidara's hoodie and pulling him behind her. She stood toe-to-toe with Onishi before grabbing his collar and yanking him down to her level. Peace was now the last thing on her mind.

His lackeys surged forward, weapons at the ready, but he waved them off and laughed. "Don't worry. I can handle a little girl." He confidently met her glare.

"I asked you a question." she stated. "What did you just call me?"

Onishi jeered. "I called you trash. Do you have a problem?"

Immediately upon hearing his answer, Sakura let go of his shirt and sent a fist straight at his nose, creating a satisfying crunching sound that reverberated in the spectators' awed silence. Blood began dribbling from Onishi's nose as he struggled to stand stably after receiving the impact.

"B-bitch."

Wordlessly, Sakura ducked under a shaky punch and socked him right back in the nose; he was nothing compared to Sasori, who she'd fought earlier. She watched him slump to his knees and hit his head on the ground before standing over him, her hands behind her back.

_He didn't any brain cells to lose anyway._

"And then what did you call me in the beginning?"

Onishi said nothing; his face was planted right into the ground.

"You heard me, and I won't ask again," she said sternly.

"I-I don't know," was the muffled reply.

Sakura lowered herself until she was kneeling beside Onishi. "You called me useless." She leaned in closer and lowered her tone. "I am not a plaything either. Call me anything like that, and I will personally castrate you with a pencil," she hissed. "Without anesthesia."

"I'm sorry," he muttered, turning his cheek to rest it against the road.

"Good."

She pushed herself up and stood by her companions, her back turned to the fallen gangster and his friends.

"Get lost."

Listening to their shuffling feet, she stared at the clouded sky. There was not a particle of regret to be found in her. In fact, it'd been rather liberating. A breath of fresh air flooded into her chest as she shut her eyes. All of her frustrations and worries had simply evaporated with those two punches.

"You're really something when you're angry, yeah," Deidara observed. He broke out into a grin. "I like it."

She smiled half-heartedly. "Thanks. Sorry I punched him, though. We're supposed to do these things peacefully, right?"

He blinked. "No, you did fine. We're allowed to use force, yeah. Pein calls it 'asserting dominance.'"

"... I see." Sakura glanced at the two beside her and choked out a giggle. "So, I'm guessing that was the assignment for the day?"

Sasori nodded. "Part of it. We must rid Onishi's territory of his emblem." He raised an arm and pointed at the nearby light pole. A poorly drawn alligator had been scrawled across the metal surface. Sakura had to rub her eyes to see it; it was rust at best and a shit stain at worst. "There should be quite a few." He tossed her a rag. "We should start soon. Spray paint removal takes a while."

* * *

That night, Sakura returned home, exhausted. She could barely lift a finger to unlock the front door, much less push open the gate. With some difficulty, she forced the door open and stumbled in. Her legs were sore and covered in dirt; the Southern Alligators apparently liked putting all of their signs in the dirtiest locations, namely under bridges and on sewer caps, and Sasori hadn't been joking when he said paint removal took a while. Cleaning paint off public surfaces had been like a difficult team-building exercise, but it had been a mostly quiet day after the spray-painting and gang-confrontation, which Sakura found to be a relatively nice way to wind down after the rather action-packed morning.

She staggered up the stairs, stripping off her god-awful hoodie and sweatpants as she went, leaving on her sweat-soaked shirt and scratchy skirt. Collapsing on her bed, Sakura sighed, not caring that she was dirty. Her limbs loosened as she sank into the fluffy mattress. The night breeze that wafted through her window caressed her skin gently. Fatigue nearly overtook her mind until she heard a now familiar voice.

"Nice room, yeah."

Sakura immediately sat bolt upright, her heart pounding out of her chest. "What are you doing here?"

Deidara landed lightly on her polished floorboards, a grin on his face. Sasori followed soon after, slipping through her window.

"Calm down, yeah, we're not here to kidnap you." Deidara held up his hands. "We're just here to give you something." He tossed her a small, rectangular object, and she caught it, curious. "It's a cell phone. Don't worry, it won't blow up in your face," he joked.

Sakura narrowed her eyes, her hand ready to throw it out the window.

"Please don't," he said quickly, face paling. "Anyway, Pein will contact you tomorrow morning through that phone. He'll tell you where to go, yeah."

She looked down at the phone she was given, and her eyes bugged. "I can't take this! It looks really expensive! I -"

"You have unlimited data and minutes," Sasori added. "But you are limited to calling and texting the members of the Akatsuki and your parents."

"Wait, but -"

"We'll be on our way."

As quickly as they appeared, the two left her room, climbing down the tree just outside her window to get to the ground. Bewildered, Sakura rushed to the window, wanting to hopefully yell out a question or two, but they had already disappeared.

"Dammit." She pounded a fist on her windowsill.

"Sakura?" Her mother's light voice reached her ears. "Are you alright?"

"Yes." She turned around and smiled, hiding the phone behind her back.

Her mother sighed. "I know you miss Konoha High, but this move was necessary. Did you make any new friends today?"

_If you consider impressing people with feats of violence, then yes._

"Yes."

"That's wonderful!" Dark, worried eyes brightened. "What are they like?"

Sakura furrowed her eyebrows. "What are they like? They're both artists, and most of the time, one of them talks to much, and the other one says nothing at all."

"That's interesting! I hope I can meet them one day."

_Please, don't._

The corners of her lips twitched. She could just imagine her mother fainting at the sight of their weapons.

"Of course."

"You seem tired," her mother observed. "I'll let you get some rest. I'm sure you'll make even more friends tomorrow." She nodded and shut the door behind her.

"Joy…"


	4. Chapter 4

If Sakura said she wasn't having the best dream of her life, she would be lying. Of course, she wasn't dreaming about rainbows, sparkly dresses, or unicorns. No. She was dreaming of herself back in her gi back in the dojo, beating a blue punching bag into a mass of sand and cloth without restraint. Everything felt real: the padded floors under feet, the fabric on her skin, the texture of the punching bag on her knuckles when she struck - they were all too familiar. Sakura could just imagine the face of everyone she'd ever been frustrated with plastered on the punching bag before her, which now included the stupid police officer, Pein, her two artist classmates, and the wannabe thug who'd insulted her several times. A smirk spread across her face as she spun and threw a spinning hook kick at the already battered bag. It fell to the floor with a satisfying _thunk. _

Normally, Sakura was a rational human being (tried to be, at least, until a few certain bastards pissed her off), but for a rare moment, she let herself go berserk, slamming her fists and feet into the faces and crotches of life-sized dummies which represented each individual that she'd just destroyed on the punching bag. While her morality didn't always allow her to go around hitting people for no reason, in her dreams, there was nothing to hold her back. Happily, Sakura ran around in her dream-dojo, pummeling everyone who had annoyed her. Irritation had been bubbling under her skin for her entire first day at Ame High School; it'd been a whirlwind of events that had led her from being a regular student in a delinquent high school to a special one, placed in the highest class due to her strength and her amazing right hook. She'd nearly died from simply walking into her new classroom and accidentally insulting one of her new classmates. Then, for the first time in her life, Sakura had disobeyed a policeman, climbed a fence, and gotten insulted by the leader of a school gang, though she achieved retribution with only two punches that had been admittedly satisfying As a result, she had to question Pein's judgment in his methods for choosing people to help him spread peace and unity as well as his sanity for scaring her into thinking she'd become a hoodlum on her first day of school. If she even tried to think about that any more, then her brain would explode.

Delivering an elbow strike (which is severely frowned upon in proper Karate) to dummy Pein's temple was doing wonders for her self-esteem. The first day at school had been a roller coaster ride, but ultimately, peace was peace, and Sakura could only stay frustrated with him for so long. There was the notion that she would have to fight others at some point, but the possibility of avoiding that was so close - she could almost smell it. The strange events that had happened throughout the course of the day couldn't all be explained in a convincing manner; there wasn't a good reason as to why Class S had been riddled with booby traps and why there was a need to mark Akatsuki territory with spray paint. But if there was one thing Sakura could explain, it was Sasori's episode with his puppets, which she had determined to simply be a reflex reaction to her damaging his creation that probably had faulty wiring. Swiftly, she gave his dummy a powerful side kick, sending it flying back, and she was satisfied. Hope. That was what had begun to course through her veins - the ideas that her classmates were actually good people who just so happened to be really strong (for the purpose of self-defense while achieving their goals) and that she could live like a normal human being if she went along with everything for a period of time.

Next came bastard Onishi's substitute. Her fist flew forward, hungering for a taste of his fabric, sexist, pig-headed flesh.

_BRAP! BRAP! BRAAAAAAP!_

Startled, Sakura's punch fell short as she stumbled to the floor, hitting her head and scaring herself awake. She immediately sat up, frantically scanning the room before her to find where the awful racket was coming from. The world spun and twirled.

"You look silly, yeah."

She froze as she focused her blurry vision on a grinning Deidara. He sat casually at the foot of her bed with his legs crossed. The phone Sasori had given her flashed in his grip. His frame shivered and his face was tinged red from his efforts to hide his laughing at her frazzled appearance. Sensing her aggravation, he turned off the alarm he'd apparently set on her phone. Casually, a pair of legs lolled over the edge of the bed.

"What time is it, and why the _hell_ are you in my room?" Pressing a hand to her forehead, Sakura attempted to calm the incessant pounding in her mind. It was still dark out and a light rain knocked on the roof above their heads. Even though she didn't know the time, the half-awake girl knew it was an unholy hour of the morning. She shut her eyes, wanting to sink back into her dream to beat the stuffing out of more annoying people. It was simply too cold to be awake; chilly air nipped at her skin and the bed beneath her begged her to stay and go back to sleep.

"It's five a.m.," he responded matter-of-factly. Dangling in his fingers was the pencil Sakura had accidentally snapped in half the week before. "And I'm here because you should've been up half an hour ago, yeah."

Sakura lifted an eyebrow in disbelief. "Why would I be up at four thirty?" She squinted out the window and saw a car pull out of the driveway and drive into the darkness. Only her father ever left the house at the crack of dawn for work, which confirmed in Sakura's mind that it was way too early to function.

"Pein called you at four thirty, yeah. Didn't we tell you he'd contact you in the morning for an assignment? By the way, I'm impressed to see that you haven't broken your new phone yet."

Ignoring his insult compliment, she wrinkled her eyebrows. "Four thirty?" Sakura groaned. "It's too early. Tell him to call me later. I'm tired." She pulled the covers over her head, laid her head down, and promptly shut her eyes.

There was simply no way she could get up now; she was still tired from yesterday, running around town and whatnot to scrub spray paint off walls. A sigh of relief passed her lips when her heavy head sank into her pillow. For a moment, she contented herself with the soothing darkness of the quiet morning. For a moment, there was no one but her in her room as she snuggled back into the welcoming sheets, enjoying the pleasant warmth that wrapped its arms around her body. Deidara said nothing as she waved a hand for him to leave her be. Her breath evening, Sakura nestled her hands in the crook of her neck. But there was a thought nagging her mind. She had to wonder why Deidara was remaining quiet, and it was this silence that made her uneasy. If she learned anything from their one-day interaction, it was that he tended to be more responsive to her in every way, especially after she'd complimented his artistic style.

It all started out as a seed of anxiety, planted in her tired thoughts that she ignored. But his continuing silence unsettled Sakura to the point where she couldn't fall asleep anymore; the seed had sprouted in her mind. Her eyes snapped wide open. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead in anticipation for something to happen as her breathing quickened. The blankets were almost like an oven, trapping her increasing body heat. Her fingers twitched under the covers when she heard the pressure at the foot of her bed disappear and the floorboards creak. Sensing a presence standing directly over her, Sakura threw her blanket off and pushed herself into a sitting position.

"Why aren't you saying anything?" she cried, pulling at her awful bed head. "Are you _trying_ to make me go crazy?" Now wide awake, Sakura realized Deidara hadn't been the only person in the room watching her. Sasori, too, stood at her bedside beside Deidara, staring down at her. Eyebrows furrowed under a mop of red hair as the stare persisted. Blankly, she stared back. "You know, that's really creepy," she managed. Sakura hadn't even noticed he was there. But more than that, it was just plain weird having two people she had only met yesterday - boys no less - with their eyes boring a hole in her face while she was in her pajamas (which was really just an oversized shirt Naruto had once given her). Their collective forwardness was making things move a bit too quickly for Sakura's taste; it had taken nearly five years of knowing Naruto before even letting him step a foot into her house. She hadn't even known Sasori and Deidara for more than a day, and they were already barging into her room without hesitation.

"You're noisy," Sasori commented. He, too, had messy bed-head, and the scowl he wore suggested he was equally as irritated as she was, but his frumpy appearance made him look more like a growling Pomeranian. "Next time, answer your phone when someone calls you." He snatched the phone from Deidara's hands and tossed it at her. It landed in her lap with a soft _thunk._ "If I am ever informed that you can't wake yourself up and that I must personally come to wake you up again, I will have my revenge." He glared at her with dull, caramel eyes before stomping towards her window and jumping to the tree.

Throwing up her hands, Sakura groaned. "You didn't even wake me up, asshole. It was this one over here!" The fist she brandished fell limply back onto the bed in exhaustion.

Deidara shook his head and sighed. "Don't mind him; he's just got low blood pressure in the mornings, yeah, but you shouldn't keep Pein waiting. Apparently, it's something important."

"It's five in the morning!"

"You were supposed to be there at four thirty. Just go, yeah. You don't want to see him angry. Ultimately, Pein controls all of your information."

A cold fist gripped Sakura's heart.

_He's right._

He, too, turned and headed for the window. Once he reached it though, Deidara threw one final glance at her. "Also, wear the hoodie and sweats we gave you yesterday. It's required. See you, yeah." He then clambered out the window, leaving Sakura alone once again in her room. The only evidence that the pair had been in her room was the open window that let in cold, morning air. The curtains drifted slightly in the breeze.

She sat there for a minute, allowing her mind to comprehend what had just happened, and she quickly concluded that she needed to lock her window from now on unless she wanted more people to intrude on her room. Perhaps a booby trap or two at the window would suffice; there'd been enough home invasions to last a lifetime.

_Bzzt. Bzzt. _

The phone in her lap buzzed quietly, a silent command for her to unlock it despite her skeptical gaze.

_Well, here goes nothing. _

She picked up the device, the cool metal sending a shiver through her body. Without thinking further, Sakura pressed the 'Home' button.

_OH GOD!_

Almost immediately, she chucked the phone across the room, her hands flying up to shield her burning eyes; the phone's brightness had scorched her vision with the intensity of a thousand suns. But what made it worse was that the phone began playing the sounds of volcanic explosions. It spazzed on the ground and flopped like a fish on land, undoubtedly making a racket. Panic shot through Sakura's body, knowing that the sound was loud enough to wake her mother and the majority of her neighbors who were still asleep. A lump of guilt rose to her throat when the dog down the street started barking and the nearby houses' lights flickered on. Blinded, she swung herself off the bed and stumbled from her bed to where she thought the phone had made its crash landing, patting the floor with her hands. At last, her hand hit the cool glass, and she scooped it up. Bracing herself, Sakura peeked at the phone and braved the next wave of scalding light and read the Caller ID. She picked up the call hesitantly and lifted the phone to her ear.

"Hello?"

"_Good morning, Haruno."_ Pein's voice glided into her ear. He didn't seem at all tired."_I believe Deidara and Sasori came to wake you." _

Sighing, she replied. "Yes, they did." Sakura winced at the bug in her voice and quietly cleared her throat.

"_I expect you in my office in ten minutes. Goodbye."_

_That was a short conversation, _she noted, ending the call. _But ten minutes to get to his office? It'll take at least twenty - five to get ready and fifteen to get there. _He couldn't have actually meant ten minutes, so naturally, Sakura assumed Pein just wanted her to be quick about getting to school, which she could do. After all, it was five in the morning, and she felt like a slug. She took one last peek at the screen and tapped on a notification for a text Deidara had sent her before Pein's call.

_Get up, yeah._

Sakura rolled her eyes - even in written form, he just _had _to include the 'yeah.'

Despite her frustration, she took his advice. From what she knew about Deidara and Sasori, they would probably run back to her house and just tow her to school anyway, so there really wasn't a point to going back to sleep at this point. Dragging herself across the floor, Sakura pulled her door open and collected the now neatly folded and washed clothes in front of her room that she'd carelessly left on the stairs the previous night. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes with difficulty and first slipped the sweats on. Then, she pulled the hoodie over her head and inched her arms through the sleeves; she was too tired to change shirts.

_It's not like anyone's going to see it, anyway._

She stuffed the phone into her pocket and forced herself to stand. There was an inherent curiosity for why Pein would want her at school this early, but this time, Sakura was not in as big of a rush to find out why. Her mind lagged while she decided what to do next. Walking to the bathroom, Sakura was careful not to make too much noise. Wearily, she grabbed the toothpaste and squeezed the appropriate amount of paste she needed onto her toothbrush. She hadn't even lifted the toothbrush to her mouth when she could feel the phone buzz again. She rolled her eyes and stuck her free hand into her pocket, not even bothering to read the Caller ID.

"Hello?"

"_Sakura Haruno. You have seven minutes left. There will be consequences if you are late. Deidara has warned you, I'm sure."_

"He did yesterday," she replied hesitantly, pretty sure he'd said something about scrubbing toilets or something of the like. "And kind of today as well."

_"Good."_

The line went dead, and she stared at her reflection in the mirror.

With that one word, something was confirmed. _He was serious._ Her eye twitched. _Shit. _She could just imagine Pein sitting at his desk in that dingy office with his fingers laced, radiating that oppressive aura of his with a Heineken at his side. Even if Pein didn't scare her as much with his physical appearance anymore, his control over her personal information and academic record - which Deidara had been kind enough to remind her of - did, and with a threat hanging over her head, Sakura knew better than to be defiant. Maybe he'd fail her and she'd never go to college. Maybe he'd even sentence her to a life of misery, trapped by loan sharks. Whatever the consequence would be, Sakura didn't want to find out.

There was no time to waste - she sprang into action and furiously ran the toothbrush over her teeth, giving herself no more than thirty seconds to do so. Her blood began racing as she spat out the bubbles and gargled, not caring that there was a stain on her collar or that she failed to wipe off the excess toothpaste at the corners of her mouth. Ignoring the rumble in her stomach, Sakura tumbled down the stairs head first, all the while combing her hair with her fingers. Breakfast would have to wait. She considered leaving a note, but decided against it, instead taking a moment to appreciate modern technology as she texted an excuse to her mother, saying that she wanted to go for a super early morning run and arrive at school early.

Checking the time before sending the message, Sakura panicked to see she only had five minutes left to make a fifteen minute drive. She burst out the door, frantically looking for transportation. The other car in the garage was off-limits; she didn't even have a permit. Besides, it was old, and the engine took forever to start. She considered calling a taxi, but she didn't have that kind of money. Furthermore, the taxi would have to obey traffic laws, and that simply wouldn't suffice for her needs. Sakura's eyes rested on her old bike that rested against the house. Hope swelled in her chest, along with utter disgust, but she was happy her father had decided to bring it along. The bike hadn't been ridden in years, and the chains were rusty. A spider web glistened in between the spokes of the tires.

_I _am _desperate._

Without a second thought, Sakura jumped on and began pedaling with all her strength, flying past stop lights and signs, not daring to slow down. The slick roads didn't deter her at all as she pretended the prickly feeling skittering up her leg wasn't a bug. Unoiled gears screeched and groaned under the force of each push. The wind slapped her from every direction and whistled loudly in her ears, and she pictured that it was slowly peeling the skin off her unwashed face. The sky was still dark, but it appeared that she wasn't the only one in a hurry; several cars filled the roads and honked at her for cutting through traffic.

"Do you want to die?" An angry man shook his fist at her from inside his car. Though it was a blur, the numerous hands that were positioned outside of the window were definitely sporting middle fingers.

"Sorry!" she screamed as she shot past a line of cars, holding on for dear life. She swerved around a bag of trash that'd been sitting in the road and yelped as the bike zoomed through a puddle of cold, dirty water.

Her legs were burning and freezing at the same time and her breathing was harsh. The hems of her pants clung to her ankles. The rough texture of the soaked fabric sent a shiver of slimy disgust up Sakura's spine, but she couldn't stop pedalling. She couldn't just stop. Sakura could only hope that all the effort she was putting into getting to school on time would pay off. In any case, she didn't particularly desire to find out just what the 'consequence' Pein had mentioned was, and she could imagine how bad his anger could be, considering he still put her on edge for various reasons.

Over the shriek of the wind, Sakura imagined that she could hear her phone ringing, blaring its stupid jingle of explosion sounds strung together, so she snatched her phone from her pocket and hit the green 'receive' button.

"HELLO!?" she bellowed over the sound of early morning traffic and the sound of her desperate pedaling.

"_You have three minutes, yeah." _

Metal handlebars bent under her grip, and a strange insanity flashed through her eyes. His calm voice irritated her to no end. "YES, I KNOW I HAVE THREE MINUTES LEFT - I'M ALMOST THERE," she roared. "IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT TO TELL ME, CAPTAIN OBVIOUS?" Ame High School was sitting just on the horizon. Sakura huffed and panted as she fought her way up the hill with legs that now felt like hundred pound weights and reminded her that she needed to exercise.

_I swear… If he doesn't say something worth the energy I've wasted already, I'll strangle him the next time I see him or at the very least knock a few brain cells out of his head._

The line went silent for a moment before Deidara responded with a thoughtful answer. "_No, not really. See ya."_

"ARGH!"

There was no way she was going to let that promise go unfulfilled. She slammed a thumb down on the red button and ended the call, huffing.

Thinking someone else would want to contact her - considering the frequency of calls she was getting - Sakura clamped her teeth down on the nuisance of a phone. At the moment, she could care less if her minty spit was covering the screen; all she wanted to do was get to Pein's office on time before she was possibly condemned to cleaning toilets, like how Deidara had warned. Every ounce of energy Sakura possessed was poured into her legs. The stench of burning rubber filled the air with every push of the pedal. Her uphill battle progressed at a declining speed, but as soon the ground beneath her leveled, she flashed forward, nearly breaking the laws of physics and human capability.

With the school rapidly approaching on the left, her fingers clamped down on the brakes as she drifted around the corner. An awful snapping sound rang in the air.

_Shit._

Sakura spared a glance at the brakes that now dangled from the handles uselessly before looking up. If she didn't get off now, she'd end up as a pancake on the wall. Gritting her teeth, Sakura flung herself off the bike and tucked into a roll. Immediately upon executing the roll, she leapt to her feet, spat the phone out of her mouth, put it in her pocket, and made a break for the school gates. The bike smacked into the wall, falling into nothing but a pile of metal parts, and the sound reverberated through the dusty school grounds. As expected, no one was at the school yet. Only the sound of Sakura's shoes scuffing the concrete filled the air. The clock that hung just above the entrance warned her that she only had a minute left to climb two flights of stairs. This activity reminded her quite a bit of what Kakashi once had her do as punishment, which was to run to his house from the dojo, find his orange-covered book, and bring it back, all within the span of five minutes. What was more important, though, was the advice he'd given her.

_Yell while you're running, _he'd suggested. _It will make you stronger. _

And yell she did. Sakura blazed down the hall, yelling at the top of her lungs and propelling herself forward. Her voice echoed down the hallway as her energy spiked. She was so close to her target; she darted up the first flight of stairs, taking it two steps at a time. Taking in another deep breath, Sakura prepared her lungs for another yell. She could feel her legs screaming at her, and her heart was beating out of chest.

_Shut up, body._

Though she, of all people, should have known the negative effects of pushing herself as hard as she was, Sakura ignored her body's protests and sprinted for the next flight of stairs. Sweat beaded at the top of her forehead; she knew she couldn't have more than half a minute left before her time limit was up. The stairs she reached were quickly scaled. Not even bothering to look at her phone to check the time, Sakura raced down the home stretch. Within her shaky vision, she could see the sign that, in her mind, read "Survival." She screeched to a halt before the door and slammed it open with one hand, busting into the room like a policewoman at a crime scene.

"I'M HERE!"

She immediately collapsed to her knees and rested her head against the cool floor. Her arms and legs were burning, and her hair had become matted with sweat. Sinking into the floor, Sakura let her limbs become one with it. Undoubtedly, it was dirty, but she didn't care; she was tired and wanted to rest. Her racing heart slowed to a jog, and she exhaled contentedly, pressing her cheek even further into the ground. She'd made it.

"Getting comfortable, yeah?"

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Shut up, Deidara. I'm tired."

She opened her eyes into slits and glared at him. Her hands itched to wrap around his throat and smash him against the wall, but they laid uselessly at her side. He was crouching over her, staring down, and from Sakura's point of view, she could see a slight double chin forming, which made Deidara looked downright silly. Biting back a slight giggle and quietly reigning in her desire to asphyxiate him, she ran a sleeve over her forehead and focused on the floor. In any case, she needed to regain her calmness and remember where she was. As she stared at the floor, Sakura noticed tiny shards of orange clay that littered the floor beside her, and her giggling ceased. She glanced around nervously, looking for a guy wearing a new, swirly orange mask. Thankfully, she didn't see him, and her nervousness decreased. Slightly.

"You alright?" Deidara bent down and leaned in close to get a better look at her face. Sakura whimpered as she held back a snicker; his double chin was growing more prominent. He raised an eyebrow at her reddening cheeks and watering eyes. A wave of laughter rippled through her body, but she wasn't about to let Deidara know why she was laughing. "Pein's waiting for you, yeah." He shrugged and nodded at the back of the chair. He pushed his knees straight and now stood. Yet he continued to hold her gaze. Sakura desperately wanted to beat the floor with her fists and laugh out loud. In an effort to hide her amusement, she covered her mouth with her hands.

"Where's Sasori?" she managed through breathy giggles. Sakura pushed her torso off the floor and rolled onto her side. Her body still protested, not really wanting to get up from its comfortable spot on the ground. "Didn't you say you always stick together because you're partners?"

Deidara shrugged. "He's fixing his puppet right now."

Sakura blinked. "Oh." _The one I broke. _Forcing herself to stand, she brushed the specks of dirt and smashed-mask off her clothes and approached the desk. Everything was neatly back in place: the chair she'd jumped out of was now parallel to the straight edge of the table, the papers were stacked in neat piles on the desk, and so was the temperature of the room - goosebumps arose on the exposed parts of her skin in response to the freezing air.

"Prin - Pein?" Sakura forced herself to say avoid the word 'principal'. It still was a weird feeling, calling a principal his real name, and it went without saying thatshe would prefer to call him by his proper title.

"Ah, Haruno." The chair he sat in swiveled around, and slowly, Pein's metal-studded face came into her view. He looked rather put-together for someone who had been up since four thirty in the morning, perhaps even earlier. His purple stare fell upon Sakura's face, and she froze, momentarily caught by the command he held in his eyes. But seconds later, her form relaxed. Fingers twitched slightly as he opened his mouth to speak again.

_He's someone who believes in peace. He can't be that bad, _she reminded herself. _Even if he did give me a bad first impression and looks like a pincushion, I always tend to judge too quickly._

"Thank you for coming. You barely missed the punishment." He rested his large, clasped hands on the table. A half-hearted smile graced his thin lips as Sakura mentally patted herself on her back. "It appears you're fitting in wonderfully. I'm sure you're wondering why I requested your presence here half an hour ago."

_Oh, jeez._

Sakura clenched her jaw. "Yes. Please tell me why," she forced through a half-smile.

_Please tell me why I was woken up at an unholy hour in the morning to come to school four hours before school starts. Tell me why I bothered coming here - it's not _that _a big deal that I almost got run over by more than a few cars and that I skipped breakfast, the most important meal of the day mind you, to get here and avoid some wicked punishment. I swear, you better have a good reason for why-_

"There's a good reason why I called you here." She stared at him as he stood. "Follow me."

Walking around his desk and out the door, Pein kept his eyes straight ahead. Sakura turned and followed hesitantly, first moving her foot half a step before looking skeptically at Deidara. He tilted his head towards the door, a quiet gesture for her to go. She nodded, walking after Pein. But as soon as she passed Deidara, she sent a fist into his gut. He doubled over, wrapping his arms around his middle, quivering as he did so. With a huff. Sakura tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, quickly catching up with her orange haired principal. A part of her congratulated herself for remembering to get back at him for earlier. They walked in heavy silence down the long corridor, Sakura keeping herself a few paces behind him.

Pein's every step was sure and solid as he led her past the various classrooms and up the stairs. His strides were fast - Sakura found herself speed-walking after him as he swept around the corner and up the stairs, leading her to Class S's floor. However, she walked with difficulty; her thighs were still burning from the unexpected workout. At the top of the stairs, he stopped. Nearly crashing into him, Sakura nearly fell down the stairs. Pein looked at her meaningfully and nodded at a lump of white, black, and red on the couch.

Sakura peeked out from behind him and gasped at what lay before her. Blood was spattered across the floor and couch, and its coppery odor tinged the cold air. Clothes were torn into shreds, doing little to hide the deep gashes on the pale skin of an unconscious man. He was almost like a corpse; not a single part of him moved. Dim sunlight streamed through the window. Only occasionally did his labored breathing hitch with a faint echo of spit at the back of his throat. Otherwise, Sakura would have thought he was dead. Shocked, she stood there, a lump of guilt forming at the back of her throat when she realized why she'd been contacted at four thirty in the morning. Out of instinct, her feet pulled her in front of Pein to get a better view.

"I believe you have medical knowledge." He looked at her, his expression still dead.

She nodded numbly. "I do, but who is this?"

"A classmate of yours."

_Which means he's part of the Akatsuki, _she realized. _But why would he be injured to this degree?_

Sakura threw him a nervous glance. "Shouldn't you have a nurse for this sort of thing? Or at least send him to the hospital? I mean, I'm only a student-"

He silenced her with a stare. Pein nodded, then gestured with his hand, allowing her to proceed. With a huge frame that blocked the way down, he'd just forced her into treating someone - not that Sakura would have run away anyway.

Stumbling forward and dropping to her knees, Sakura took a closer look at the injuries. The cuts were deeper than she had previously thought, and they were lined with dirt. In fact, the entire body was covered in dirt. Analyzing was now the first thing on her mind. She gently probed the flesh around the cuts. It was clear the wounds were going to be infected if they weren't cleaned soon.

"I'm going to need some alcohol, bandages, swabs, and tweezers." Sakura glanced at her orange haired principal. "I also need a towel and some cold water. If I don't clean his wounds soon, bacteria will get into his body," she explained. The question of how the stranger had gotten so injured begged to be asked, but she held her tongue; it wasn't the priority at the moment. "And he might need stitches, but I can't really do that for you…"

_Not legally, _her inner voice corrected.

"I see." He waved his hand, and Deidara appeared at his side with the an assortment of bottles and bags in his hands. "We always have first aid available," Pein said as Deidara neared her, his steps slow and reluctant. Sakura reached up, her eyebrow raised, and received them, picking apart the labelled items. She smiled weakly. Their first aid equipment was rather worn out - it seemed as if it hadn't been used in a while, but it had everything. Band-aids, aspirin, a thermometer, gloves, and more were crammed into the bags. The hodgepodge of stuff couldn't really be called a first aid kit, but it was something and it was doable. As each item was mulled over, Deidara set down a bottle of water at her side.

Brushing off a layer of dust off a glass jar, Sakura could tell she'd picked up some rubbing alcohol. She quickly discerned what she need and what she didn't need, laying everything out at her side. After she rolled up her sleeves, carefully, Sakura began running an alcohol-soaked swab over tweezers, though her pinky finger twitched when she felt two piercing gazes aimed at her hands.

Sakura exhaled. With their intense stares, it meant that any mistake was too much. Perhaps it meant the person being treated was important. The hair on her arms stood as she unknowingly allowed tension to escalate. She snorted in her mind, though. If they were worried about her making a mistake, then they probably should have hired someone who was legally qualified (even if she knew in her mind that she would be better). Deciding to start on the arms, carefully, she tore off the sleeves of the hoodie.

The atmosphere was quick to change as Sakura focused and pushed extraneous thoughts out of her mind; she worked in silence, first on the arm nearest to her, meticulously wiping down the areas around the cuts. Progress was slow - the blood that had been oozing out of the gashes was now drying up, and it took some force to scrub it off. The combination of blood and dirt made the job all the more tedious, and the numerous bruises that got in the way didn't help either. But with care, the cuts were cleaned, and a moist towel dabbed at the stranger's sweaty forehead. Another one delicately dabbed at patches of grime. A bottle of antiseptic she found was used to coated the scrapes and lacerations with soothing liquid. It was all a routine, really, that Sakura had executed several times when she had helped Naruto recover from his stupid antics and Sasuke from his attempts to become a firebender when they were kids.

An accidental brush from her alcohol cotton swab on an open wound earned her a jerk in the meaty arm of her patient. His jaw clenched, and a guttural groan rumbled in his throat.

"Sorry," she muttered, readjusting her weight. Her arm was re-positioned at an awkward angle to prevent herself from hurting him further, and she resumed working. But it didn't take long for her arm to begin tiring and her hands to begin shaking.

_Concentrate._

A deep breath filled her lungs. Her arms fell to her sides, and the aching ceased. She held herself that way for a moment before throwing herself back into the task. Time seemed to disappear as, in her mind, Sakura isolated herself and her patient from the world.

Skillful fingers wrapped cuts in bandages, though they sometimes fumbled with the sheer weight of the limb they lifted. Sakura soon discovered that she was going through rolls of bandages like nobody's business because each arm had muscles the size of watermelons. She hadn't even finished the upper half of his body - much less the arm that she had been working on - when her hands grabbed air.

"Here. I ran to get some more, yeah."

Sakura turned her head and smiled half-heartedly at Deidara. He set the fresh bandages on an empty bag.

"Thanks. That's really nice of you." She patted a band-aid onto a graze on her patient's scratched cheek. Then, she reached for another. It was quickly unpeeled and smoothed onto his nose.

Her blonde companion shrugged. "I only brought them because Pein told me to bring more, yeah."

"...How generous," she replied, her tone dry, as she read the labels of the new bandages. Sakura held back a snort when she realized that Deidara had most likely bought the cheapest ones he could find; she could still see the orange 50% off discount sticker on it. "Speaking of which, where is he?" She ripped off the plastic and continued to wrap the bulky trunk-like arm. She winced at the thought that once again, she'd concentrated on her task so much that she shut out everyone else.

"Pein went back to his office. He told me to stay here and help you, yeah." Deidara glared distastefully at the man she was treating.

Sakura bit her lip. "You don't seem to like this person," she observed. It was too good of an opportunity to learn more about her classmates, who for the most part, were all mysteries. She let her observation hang in the air.

_Not too tight, _the inner doctor warned as she swathed on another layer of bandage. Her grip on the fabric loosened slightly, and she adjusted the speed at which she worked. _That's right… Take your time._

After a moment, Deidara responded. "Not really, yeah. He's an asshole."

A pair of pink eyebrows lifted. "Why don't you like him?"

"I'd rather not say," he responded. Sakura glanced over at him. The corners of his lips were dipped down into a sulk. Vibrant blue eyes darkened and narrowed. His hands were crammed into his pockets as he looked away. Clearly, he didn't want to talk.

_Better not push it._

"Ok."

Silence resumed. He seemed to observe her every movement, which made the temporary pink-haired nurse quite nervous. Confidence wavering, she accidentally began letting bandages tumble through her fingers; she couldn't help but feel like he was judging her silently. It was all just conjecture in her mind, but Sakura began to imagine that her technique was wrong and he was actually a medical genius, but Sakura knew for a fact she was doing everything right. Throughout the past year, she'd thoroughly plunged herself into the medical field, and after periodically volunteering and interning at Tsunade's family's hospital for a few years, she could say with certainty that a single mistake hadn't been made yet.

"You're good at this. You've been sitting there for an hour, yeah."

_Oh._

"Thanks." Sakura pushed herself off her knees, leaned over, and began working on the other arm. That one was equally bloody, if not bloodier, and a few times into her treatment, Deidara had been called over to assist her in scrubbing off the caked on blood, and he'd get scolded when he began slacking. After finishing with cleaning, Sakura worked alone and in silence, and the atmosphere of the hallway was soon to follow. The only sound that pervaded the air was the sound of her steady breathing and the sound of hands vigorously smacking wet clay (Deidara had gotten bored). And to some degree, she enjoyed the stillness of the morning as she fixed a patch onto her classmate's formerly bloody neck; it reminded her of the quietness back in the hospital where she'd worked. The sun, by now, had risen, and it hung in the sky that was now washed over with streaks of orange, yellow, and red. Applying the finishing touches, Sakura wiped the sweat off her brow.

Then, she began tearing the remains of the black Akatsuki hoodie off her classmate's torso, starting at the bottom.

"What are you doing, yeah?" Deidara's face was blue, and his pupils dilated in horror. A hand flew to his face to hide his innocent eyes from contamination.

She blinked, her hands freezing. For some reason, the people who watched Sakura treat others questioned her straightforward approach. "I need to check his chest for cuts. I've fixed his arms, hands, face," she said bluntly. A finger motioned at the bruises peppered on the body. "And there's not much I can do about these." The split in the fabric grew larger, as did the split between Deidara's fingers.

"I don't think I can watch this."

Rolling her eyes, Sakura shrugged; he was pretty much contradicting himself because he was staring at the ripping through the cracks in his fingers. "Then don't."

With a nod, he covered his mouth with his hands and gagged. "Yeah. I can't watch this. I'm out of here, yeah." Immediately, he whirled around and dove into the classroom, slamming the door shut behind him.

"What's his problem?" Sakura returned to tearing the clothes of an unconscious stranger. Strong, swift fingers easily ripped apart stubborn, matted fabric. Once she'd completely exposed his torso, she did a quick scan of his chest and stomach. To her surprise, there were numerous cuts across his chest, but virtually nothing on his abdominal muscles, which was rather strange for anyone who was as hurt as he was. To be fair, though, when Sakura gave them an experimental poke out of sheer curiosity, they felt like bricks. It must've taken years to get as ripped as he was. Even Lee, who worked out every day, sadly did not have the definition that the invalid had.

"Abs of steel, huh?" she mused, snickering at the thought as she pasted a few band-aids on the nicks and scratches. The bigger gashes were managed like how she had earlier; they were cleaned with water and treated with antiseptic. Then, they were protected by a layer of gauze. Standing back in admiration, Sakura smiled in triumph. Now all that she had to do were the legs…

Moving towards the lower half of the body, Sakura could hear a faint choke from behind her, and she couldn't help but roll her eyes. Talk about over dramatic.

"You know," she said, rolling up the pant's legs, "you don't _have_ to watch."

Her movements ceased until she heard the door behind her squeak shut. Then, a smirk graced her lips as she rolled the pants up to reveal two fleshy legs that could be mistaken for sausages.

Thankfully, there weren't many injuries on his legs; most of them had been on the upper half of his body. Even for the few that were there, Sakura kept her applications flawless. But she had to hide a snicker; he was wrapped head to toe in gauze and cloth. The man had been injured to the point where he could be mistaken for a mummy, even more so a newborn child with superhuman abs that bulged out proudly in the middle of the textured, white cotton. Cleaning the last few scrapes, Sakura sighed. It troubled her to even imagine where such extensive injuries came from and think of when her patient was going to wake up. One last swipe of the towel across the forehead and the leftover equipment was packed back into the bags, now organized, of course, and placed onto a nearby table. There wasn't much left to do but let the natural body processes take over, which would take weeks, maybe even months to recover from. She stood there beside the corpse-like body before awkwardly glancing about, turning around, and walking to the classroom door open. Only when she slid the door open and was a step in did Sakura check to make sure there weren't any new booby traps, which thankfully, there were none. Taking a deep breath, she ventured further after shutting the door behind her.

Sure enough, Deidara and Sasori were inside, sitting in the middle of the room. Sasori had a toolbox at his side as he probed the wooden shell of the puppet Sakura had busted the yesterday. His lips were twisted into a frown. His blonde partner, though, laid on his back casually, a lump of clay in his hands. There didn't seem to be any activated stink bombs on the premises, and no arrows or ninja stars were being flung their way. To say the least, Sakura concluded that it was safe to walk freely the classroom, so she did. Keeping herself a safe but casual-enough distance from them, Sakura lowered herself to the floor. Neither Sasori nor Deidara said anything. They simply sat in silence with Sakura, who watched the puppet slowly reform. The halves were held together by a neat line of super glue, and the disintegrated face had been replaced with a blank mask. P1 seemed to be completely repaired except for some of the weapon holders in its body, which Sasori accessed through a hatch in its back.

"Tch." Sasori hissed under his breath as he tried to refit a knife back into its rightful place. Unfortunately, it kept slipping out. Sakura had to wonder, though, why he even bothered to stick more knives into the puppet when it had plenty already. And the knife he was trying to force back in wasn't even the last one; a whole pile sat at his side. A frustrated sigh later, and the wooden puppet was tossed aside. "It was flawed, anyway." With the flick of the wrist, he'd embedded the uncooperative knife into the wall behind him. "Deidara, expose of this trash."

He waved a hand dismissively. "I'm not your servant, yeah. Just because we don't have an assignment today doesn't mean you have to give me one." Deidara bent a leg propped the other one up on it. "Besides, it's your problem."

The tension in the air had thickened considerably. The pink haired girl pulled her lips into a tight line and eyed her classmates nervously. Yesterday, while they were cleaning the spray paint off the streets, the two had gotten into a huge argument over art that nearly destroyed a house or two, and it was clear that they were still in conflict. It boggled her mind that they could hold a petty grudge for so long. Then again, she still wanted to fry Onishi's guts for insulting her pride.

Sasori rolled his eyes. "Fool." He wrenched a knife out from the puppet's insides and began twirling it into a blur of silver with his fingers. "Little girl," he said, turning his attention to her, "you must decide."

_Little girl?_

Obviously, he was referring to her, unless Deidara had suddenly sprouted breasts. Sakura couldn't help but feel offended. Yes, she knew her hair made her look younger than she actually was, and she was also fully aware that her efforts to look and act maturely weren't working. But for the love of everything holy and good, Sasori was shorter than her, even if it was just by a little bit! His disdainful glares ticked Sakura off - if anything, he was a little boy. Self-control was the only thing holding her back from throwing insults at him, and it seemed he didn't really like her, even if he had shown a fraction of a fraction of kindness when she'd complimented his street art. Insulting him back would only start more fights she didn't need. Furthermore, Sakura would be lying to herself if she thought she could defeat Sasori at the moment; she knew just how disadvantaged she was from her year long hiatus because the fight with her red-headed "friend" hadn't been easy in the least.

"Decide on what?" she sniffed.

"Your definition of art - you've had nearly 24 hours to think about it." A cold, honey-colored stare fixed upon her face. "Is it something temporary or lasting?"

Sakura thought for a moment and crossed her arms; she'd never really took time out of her day to think of things like this, but a reply was quickly formed. Her interpretation would definitely set him off a bit, but she wasn't planning on agreeing with everything he said. "Art is something that springs from imagination and experience. We are all different, so meanings will vary. Therefore for you, it might be that art is everlasting while for Deidara, it's something that is fleeting." She narrowed her eyes. "You can't put a boundary on what art can and can't be. In any case, I think yours and Deidara's art are both accomplished in their own ways."

Disappointment flashed clearly in his eyes. "That's your answer?"

She nodded firmly. "Yes."

He said nothing in reply. The knife in his hand ceased its twirling and found its place in the cracks of the floorboards. The sound of splintering wood echoed through the massive classroom.

"You both are fools." Fluidly, Sasori got to his feet and glared down at her before stalking towards the door. He was anything but delighted when he'd heard her answer.

Concerned green eyes met blue. Deidara shrugged and mouthed, _He does this a lot._

However, before the angry red head could yank open the door, it was slammed open before he could even reach it. Hands immediately flew to a hidden belt and brought forth two blades the length of forearms. Poised in an x-formation in front of his chest, the knives were prepared in a defensive position.

"Seriously," Sakura muttered. "Why is he carrying all of these weapons?"

But what entered the door came as a complete surprise to Sakura. Her jaw dropped to see a silver-haired man coated in nothing but gauze and bandages saunter through the threshold. He almost looked bored; a finger was nonchalantly brought up to his ear to dislodge a clump of earwax that he promptly flicked aside. It amazed Sakura that he could walk - let alone stand - without falling over and wincing at his injuries. As if he couldn't feel anything, he smirked and scratched his arm pits. Pride swelled in Sakura's chest as she noted that her bindings were holding, even if they were on a person who came off as a complete pig.

Disdain was clearly written across the newcomer's face. "Shit. The first thing you do when I walk in is point those toothpicks at me?"

Sasori sneered, his teeth bared. "They can hardly be called toothpicks when they nearly tore out your tendons a week ago, Hidan."

_Oh, man. _Sakura's eyes widened.

A large, dressed hand waved in the air dismissively. "Yeah, yeah. Fuck off and go fix your dolls. Where's Kakuzu?"

"Puppets," Sasori corrected with a tight voice. "Gone. He left to finish a deal with the people in Iwa earlier after dumping your body here."

At that moment, Sakura prayed that her puppet-obsessed classmate wouldn't completely flip out and wreck more than an hour's worth of work.

Purple eyes rolled in their sockets. "Fuck! Again?"

Deidara stood from his spot on the ground and wiped his hands clean of clay bits. "He's your partner, yeah. Shouldn't you know these things?"

Hidan's upper lip curled. "The fuck did you say? Fight me, you blonde dickhead! I'll wipe the floor with you." Then, an irritated purple gaze fell on Sakura. "And who is this bitch? Don't tell me she's the new kid." He smirked as understanding lit his expression. "Sasori isn't this bitch was the one who smashed your doll into pieces?"

She refrained herself from planting his face into the wall and driving a foot up his ass. It seemed as if Sasori, too, was trying to control himself. His grip on the handles of the blades tightened noticeably.

Sasori exhaled and sheathed his blades. "We have a genius in our midst. Yes, she's new." He turned and nodded at his pink haired classmate, his face marked with disgust. "Little girl, meet the idiot of the group."

****

**Hey guys, it's the author. I just wanted to apologize for the numerous updates to the first three chapters (you probably got notified 132456 times) because I didn't realize that ff got rid of some of my italics, which made the second chapter an especially disgusting read. I had that problem with the third one, too, but I fixed it after looking through the preview. I also checked to see what it would look like out of the preview, and I found out that the words go right up to the next chapter button, which looks like pure garbage. I'm going to fix the formatting on that, too, so bear with me as I update a few more times. Sorry about that, and hopefully this kind of shit doesn't happen again.**


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